Billions and trillions

As a research scientist and a science editor, I’m used to hypotheses being proved wrong and theories being changed as new evidence comes to light. One thing scientists aren’t used to changing is how we express and write numbers. We know for a fact that 2 + 2 = 4, don’t we? However, when it comes to really large numbers, those over a million, our relationship wavers. Let me introduce the short scale and long scale nomenclature (naming) systems for integer powers of 10.