The Clarity of Standard Form

Discussions of very large, or very small, magnitudes are obscured by a plethora of prefixes.

I've never had difficulty with mega, or micro, and as computer storage capacities have expanded I've gradually become accustoned first to 'giga' and then to 'tera' but how many readers can confidently, without looking them up, identify 'femto', 'exa', 'peta' or 'atto' ? Incidentally, the last letter of each may be a clue.

None of those is needed. We can use Standard Index Form, or 'Standard Form' for those who like to save words.
Instead of saying the length of a year is 31 megaseconds, say 3.1*10⁷. Instead of longing for a hard drive with capacity 4 exabytes, measure your aspirations by 4*10¹⁸