3 key takeaways
- Write a million as M on most resumes ($2.5M), and MM only for finance roles where the people reading write MM themselves.
- Use K for thousands and B for billions, with no space and at most one decimal.
- Pick one style for the whole resume, and never round a number up.
To abbreviate million on a resume, write a capital M right after the number, with no space: $1,000,000 becomes $1M, and $20 million becomes $20M. That is the form Teal's 2,121 sample resumes use, finance ones included. Use MM ($2.5MM) only if you are applying in finance, banking or accounting and the people reading your resume write MM themselves. Whichever you pick, use it for every number.
Should you write M or MM for million on a resume?
Write M unless you are applying in finance. M is the metric prefix for a million (mega, as in megabyte), so to most readers $5M means five million dollars.
Finance is the exception because there M has long meant a thousand, from the Roman numeral M. Writing MM means "a thousand thousands," which is a million. The same habit shows up in oil and gas, where Mcf means a thousand cubic feet. Do not confuse it with real Roman numerals, where MM is 2,000.
So it comes down to who reads the resume. For an investment banking, private equity or corporate finance role, $15MM looks familiar to the person reading it. Everywhere else, MM can make a reader stop and wonder what you meant, and a resume should never make a reader stop.
What Teal's 2,121 sample resumes use
Resume Worded's resume guide calls MM the most common way to write millions. Teal's own resume examples library does not use it once. Its 2,121 sample resumes write millions as M 4,923 times and spell out "million" 830 times. That holds for the 102 finance, accounting and banking samples too, from staff accountant to investment banker: M 408 times, "million" 74 times, MM never.
How to abbreviate thousand, million and billion
Put the letter in capitals, right after the number:
| Amount | Write | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Thousand | K | Cut vendor costs by $850K |
| Million | M | Managed a $2.5M annual budget |
| Million, for finance readers | MM | Led a $20MM debt refinancing |
| Billion | B | Supported a $1.2B loan portfolio |
If you use MM, write thousands as K and never use a lone M. One $850M next to a $2.5MM leaves the reader guessing whether you meant thousands or millions.
How to format the number
- One decimal at most. Write $1.5M, not $1.53M. A second decimal adds precision nobody needs in a bullet.
- No space. Write $2M, not $2 M. None of the M figures in Teal's samples has a space, and a space can push the M onto the next line.
- A plus for a floor. "10M+ monthly users" means at least 10 million. Put the plus after the letter, not between the number and the letter.
- Round down, never up. If you raised $10.5M, write $10.5M or $10M, never $11M. An interviewer may ask about the number, and it has to match what you can show.
- Under a million, use K or the full number. Both $850K and $850,000 are fine. Teal's samples use both, so match whichever style the rest of your resume uses.
When should you spell out million?
Spell out "million" in full sentences: a cover letter, the summary at the top of your resume, or your LinkedIn About section. Abbreviations save space in bullets, but in a paragraph they read like notes. Pair the figure with the word, as in "$1.5 million." The University of Colorado's style guide says the same: use figures with million or billion.
Counts that are not money follow the same rule: "1.2M users" in a bullet, "1.2 million users" in a sentence.
Examples: weak vs. stronger bullets
Weak: "Responsible for a large budget and many accounts."
Stronger: "Managed a $2.5M annual marketing budget across 14 regional accounts."
Why it works: the size of the job is one number, written the way any reader expects.
Weak: "Grew revenue by $1,500,000 and saved $0.3 M in costs."
Stronger: "Grew revenue by $1.5M and cut costs by $300K in one fiscal year."
Why it works: both numbers use the short form, with no space, and the reader sees two results in one line.
Weak (for a finance role): "Worked on deals worth 50 million and 1.2 billion."
Stronger: "Executed 6 M&A transactions from $50MM to $1.2B in enterprise value."
Why it works: it uses the MM style finance readers know, and swaps "worked on" for a count of deals you executed.
Teal's AI Resume Builder drafts achievement bullets for each role in your work history. Give it the real numbers, then check that every bullet uses the style you picked. For more ways to show results with numbers, see how to quantify your resume and Teal's formula for resume bullet points.
Related Teal resources
- Format the other short forms on your resume with how to format dates on your resume.
- Pick the numbers worth showing with resume metrics and KPIs.