Paul: It has always been a confusing mess but I think this will help.
1. The FARAD (named after Michael Faraday of British fame) is a MAMMOTH amount of capacitance and was based upon a given number of electrical charges (coulombs). Even 1 Farad (F) is seldom needed except as computer memory backup and a few other isolated instances.
2. Most of the capacitance applications applicable to electronics are in the microfard region (uf or mf) which is 10 -6 Farads. You will see the mf abbreviation for this even though the "m" does indeed coincide with "milli" units in the si system.
3. The old "micromicrofarad" (mmfd) is actually a picofarad (10 -12 Farads) and is seen in older diagrams as mmf or mmfd rather than the "si" correct "pf".
4. I am told by a physics collegue that the reason for not using the "micro" term on older diagrams was that typewriters did not have a "micro key" AND the standard California job case that contained printers type did not have one either. I think this is correct in that if you look in early physics texts the "micros" appear to be "scratched in" rather than a legible sharp type imprint.