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How many zeros are in 1 billion?

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Christy Rico

Lvl 2
2y ago
Updated: 10/17/2024

There are 9 in the US, but possibly 12 in other countries, because there are two scales that use the same number names. The short scale advances names by thousands (thousand, million, billion, trillion, quadrillion) while the long scale advances numbers by millions, with intermediate names (e.g. milliard) for the thousands of those units.

--- Short Scale ---

In the 'short scale', a million is a thousand thousand, and a billion is a thousand million (1 x 109)

million 1,000,000 (6 zeros)

billion 1,000,000,000 (9 zeros)

trillion 1,000,000,000,000 (12 zeros)

*All English speaking countries now use the short scale.

(The UK changed to the short scale in 1974.)

(Some non-English speaking countries [Brazil, Bulgaria, Estonia, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Myanmar, Romania, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and Wales] call the 9 zero number a billion (or sometimes a milliard) and the 12 zero number a trillion. Greece also uses the short scale, but with different names.)

--- Long Scale ---

In the 'long scale' a billion is a million million, with 12 zeros (1 x 1012):

million 1,000,000 (6 zeros)

billion 1,000,000,000,000 (12 zeros)

trillion 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 (18 zeros)

milliard (thousand million) = 1,000,000,000 (9 zeros)

billiard (thousand billion) = 1,000,000,000,000,000 (15 zeros)

*Most non-English speaking countries use the long scale.

(Some countries like Canada, Puerto Rico and South Africa use both, depending on whether English is being spoken or not.

Some countries (Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, China, Japan, North and South Korea) have their own names and systems of numbering.) Researchers need to be careful with numbers greater than one million in English historical documents, and in numbers from countries other than their own.
one it is in the question

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9y ago

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