Sagantific Notation

• Published 2026-08-02 8:03 PM -05:00
• Updated 2026-08-02 8:03 PM -05:00
• 1 min read
• By Christopher Abichandani

Sagantific notation is base-billion positional notation: any quantity is expressed as a mantissa times a power of one billion, where the exponent is written by saying "billion" that many times. So 10¹⁸ is "a billion billion," 10²⁷ is "a billion billion billion," and 6 x 10²² normalizes to "sixty thousand billion billion."

Please bear in mind:

• Values below 10⁹ cannot be represented and are of no cosmic significance
• All quantities carry implicit error bars of "and billions"
• Proper delivery must be slow, awed, with a fully plosive b. I mean really plosey.
• Significant figures are capped at one, because precision is a failure of wonder