> >         ORDERS_OF_3 = [""] + %w(thousand million billion trillion zillion
> 								    ---^---
> I don't know how that cropped up in there... if you remove it, the program 
> works a bit better ;)

Note that French and British systems, 10**12 is called a billion, and
10**9 is called a milliard. In Canada, both the American English and the
French ones are used.

I would recommend against using "worded", non-exponential notation for
numbers >= 10**12.

matju