TheRoman numeral M represents the number1000, though it was not used inRoman times. There is, however, scant evidence that the letter was later introduced in the early centuries A.D. by the Romans.[3]
Unit prefix M (mega), meaning one million times, and m (milli) meaning one-thousandth.[4][5]
M is used as the unit abbreviation formolarity.[4]
With money amounts, m or M is ambiguous. In the finance industry,[6] m or M means 1,000. In this context, five million dollars is written $5mm or $5MM. Outside of finance, some people use M like the metric system "mega-" to mean one million and write $5M.[4][5]
M often represents male or masculine, especially in conjunction with F for female or feminine.[4][5]
In typography, anem dash is a punctuation symbol whose width is similar to that of a capital letter M.
M is used as a logo by manyrapid transit systems, standing for "Metro" (or equivalents in other languages.)
Related characters
Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet
ꟽ : Inverted M was used in ancient Roman texts to stand formulier (woman)[12]
ꟿ : Archaic M was used in ancient Roman texts to abbreviate the personal name 'Manius' (A regular capital M was used for the more common personal name 'Marcus')[12]
^See F. Simons, "Proto-Sinaitic — Progenitor of the Alphabet"Rosetta 9 (2011):Figure Two: "Representative selection of proto-Sinaitic characters with comparison to Egyptian hieroglyphs", (p. 38)Figure Three: "Chart of all early proto-Canaanite letters with comparison to proto-Sinaitic signs" (p. 39),Figure Four: "Representative selection of later proto-Canaanite letters with comparison to early proto-Canaanite and proto-Sinaitic signs" (p. 40). See also: Goldwasser (2010), following Albright (1966), "Schematic Table of Proto-Sinaitic Characters" (fig. 1Archived 2016-07-03 at theWayback Machine).
