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I'd like to say something like:

I helped my company win a $1m deal with customer A.

I'm not sure which one of the following is the best one for a formal document? e.g. in a resume:

1 million dollar deal, $1 million deal, 1 million$ deal, or anything better?

Kris
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Deqing
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3 Answers3

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Officially, m stands for milli (which means 10-3, i.e. a thousandth), and M stands for mega, that is million.
A $5k or a $2M deal would be better.

More formal would be

a five thousand dollar deal or a $5,000 deal
a two million dollar deal or a $2,000,000 deal.

I would certainly refrain from mixing text and numbers, especially in formal writing, so I would avoid anything using

*$2 million, *$5 thousand

oerkelens
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  • What about a one million dollar deal? Is it ok to put a and one together? – Deqing Sep 22 '14 at 09:50
  • I see no problem with a one (million) dollar deal, as it explicitly shows the deal is worth on million, not two or three. Just a million dollar deal means roughly the same, but it feels less precise. – oerkelens Sep 22 '14 at 10:50
  • @oerkelens Why not two or three? A in this case has a special meaning, not one per se. There is a recent related Q on ELU. I've not yet checked it again. – Kris Sep 22 '14 at 11:11
  • @Kris: are you asking why one does not mean two? I am making exactly the point you seem to be expressing: a million dollar deal may not be about exactly one million! – oerkelens Sep 22 '14 at 11:25
  • oerkelens No, I didn't mean such a GR thing, lol, but something else altogether. Anyways, there's a mix up, sorry. – Kris Sep 22 '14 at 11:36
  • +1 good clarification about mille but perhaps add a parenthetical that it means thousand – bib Sep 22 '14 at 11:50
  • @bib: that is milli, not ever mille; the prefix for thousand is K. It means one thousandth, not thousand. But it's a good point about clarification, I added it. – oerkelens Sep 22 '14 at 12:02
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    the fact is though, it's extremely common to use "m" (not "M") when you're discussing such stuff. we did 3m this year, that was a 2m deal, etc. – Fattie Sep 22 '14 at 12:16
  • @JoeBlow: yes, sloppy use of units is indeed incredibly common. That is no reason not to mention that it is sloppy. If you think m is 1 million, good luck with taking 500 mg of paracetamol :) Sloppiness leads to confusion, I often see people having no idea that Mb and MB are not the same unit. But they do wonder why their internet is "slow" when they pay for 10 Mb/s and download at 1 MB/s. – oerkelens Sep 22 '14 at 12:21
  • Hey oerk -- "sloppy use of units is indeed incredibly common"? Do you think so? Among scientists, etc, I don't see it so often! To be clear, what I meant in the previous was "in the milieu of venture capitalists, the sewer that is the 'dot-com universe', and the broader deal-making-world generally, but particularly with an emphasis on the current 'technology/internet' era..." .. it is more usual to write 3m, 1m. (And indeed, for salaries, 20k, 80k, etc., also lower-case.) Sorry if I was unclear on that. – Fattie Sep 22 '14 at 12:27
  • @JoeBlow: I did mean "among people in the street". I may hope scientists do not mix up m and M when preparing your prescription medicine, the same way they would not mix pounds and Newtons on a Mars mission... oh wait. – oerkelens Sep 22 '14 at 12:39
  • lol good one.... – Fattie Sep 22 '14 at 15:07
  • The SI prefix for 1000 is lowercase k (probably for historic reasons) and for 1'000'000 it's uppercase M. – CodesInChaos Sep 22 '14 at 15:14
  • @CodesInChaos I stand corrected and note that I exemplified my own point :( – oerkelens Sep 22 '14 at 15:17
  • Folks, cool down. We are not talking about prefixes (milli/mega) at all, but a unit all by itself: m = million. Go figure! – Kris Sep 23 '14 at 06:04
3

1 million dollar deal — Use words instead: (a) one million dollar deal
$1 million deal — correct, but unidiomatic
1 million$ deal — just plain wrong, currency symbol is not suffixed to words.
$1m deal — correct, but unidiomatic

The options would thus be:

  • One million dollar deal — should be okay
  • A million dollar deal — idiomatic, preferred in literary/ narrative use
  • A $1m deal — use in shortened versions, titles, captions, abstracts …
  • A one million dollar deal — uses the idiom, use for effect.
Kris
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-3

I guess the corrections may be the following:
category-1
"I helped my company winning a million dollars' deal with customer A."
"I helped my company winning a one million dollars' deal with customer A."
category-2
"I helped my company winning a US$1 million (1M) deal with customer A."
"I helped my company winning a $1 million (1m) deal with customer A."
category-3
"I helped my company winning a US$1 million deal with customer A."
"I helped my company winning a $1 million deal with customer A."
category-4
"I helped my company winning a US$1M deal with customer A."
"I helped my company winning a US$1m deal with customer A."
category-5
"I helped my company winning a $1M deal with customer A."
"I helped my company winning a $1m deal with customer A."

All, stated above, are correct; I, on the whole, prefer to use category-2/sentence no-1 .

REFERENCES:
1)https://www.onlinegrammar.com.au/writing-style-tips-how-to-write-about-money/
2)https://www.avidcareerist.com/2014/01/06/how-to-abbreviate-million-on-your-resume/
3)https://www.thebalance.com/write-numbers-using-words-4083198

KillingTime
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SHAMIM YEASIR SAION
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