Please, please, please, stop using “trillion” etc. because British English and US English treat these words differently and besides, no one has a clue how big a “trillion” is — it’s just “bazillion.” There’s a perfectly good and completely unambiguous notation to describe large numbers and every literate and numerate person knows it and you use it once values become too large for vague woolly words no one can really conceptualize. Please start using 10⁹ etc. consistently, rather than just when you run out of “bazillions.” I think you can assume anyone reading your column will be educated enough to know what this means and to prefer it to vague “bazillions” and rather than mixing vague words with proper notation your articles can be internally consistent from a stylistic perspective.