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by gberger 2496 days ago
Pet peeve: converting currencies from the original makes for awkward headlines, as well as making the article future-incompatible (because of exchange rate fluctuations).

They should keep the original €1M in the title. It is what they offered.

4 comments

The problem is that you and I may know the rough exchange rates for Euros, pounds, and dollars (and the fact that we can more or less treat them as equivalent at this level). But a lot of US readers won't.

I probably wouldn't have any idea if this were some other European non-Euro currency.

I'd agree with you if they didn't have Euros in the article but the headline is really just there to entice readers. And it doesn't really do that with a number that's essentially meaningless to the reader. "Germany city offers 50 zorkmids to whoever..." ADDED: If you don't want a conversion then just say offers reward.

Reading your point and GP's point, I understand your reasoning, but I agree with GP
I agree about keeping the original currency, but I don’t buy the future- incompatibility argument. Even comparing current dollars to past dollars needs to be taken with a grain of salt and some reflection (though, granted, inflation is not so quick as forex), but when the specific news event happened, the dollar equivalent number had the same value as the euro-denominated one.
Or they just abbreviate to 1M dollars, they offered slightly more, but they also did offer 1M dollars worth of euros.
There is only one significant figure, saying $1M would be enough. It is an editorial decision anyway.