| $ | |
|---|---|
Dollar sign | |
| Other names | Peso sign |
| In Unicode | U+0024 $DOLLAR SIGN ($) |
| Currency | |
| Currency | Many (seedollar,peso) |
| Graphical variants | |
 | |
 Category | |
Thedollar sign, also known as thepeso sign, is acurrency symbol consisting of acapital⟨S⟩ crossed with one or two vertical strokes ($ or.svg)
depending ontypeface), used to indicate the unit of variouscurrencies around the world, including most currencies denominated "dollar" or "peso". The explicitly double-barred sign is calledcifrão in thePortuguese language.
The sign is also used in several compound currency symbols, such as theBrazilian real (R$) and theUnited States dollar (US$): in local use, the nationality prefix is usually omitted. In countries that have othercurrency symbols, the US dollar is often assumed and the "US" prefix omitted.
The one- and two-stroke versions are often considered mere stylistic (typeface) variants, although in some places and epochs one of them may have been specifically assigned, by law or custom, to a specific currency. TheUnicode computer encoding standard defines a single code for both.
In mostEnglish-speaking countries that use that symbol, it is placed to the left of the amount specified, e.g. "$1", read as "one dollar".
The symbol appears in business correspondence in the 1770s from theWest Indies referring to the Spanish American peso,[1] also known as "Spanish dollar" or "piece of eight" in British America. The Spanish coins provided the model for the currency that the United States adopted in 1792,[2] and for the larger coins of the new Spanish American republics, such as theMexican peso,Argentine peso,Peruvian real, andBolivian sol coins.
With theCoinage Act of 1792, the United States Congress created the U.S. dollar, defining it to have "the value of a Spanish milled dollar as the same is now current"[3][4] but a variety of foreign coins were deemed to belegal tender until theCoinage Act of 1857 ended this status.[5]
The earliest U.S. dollar coins did not have any dollar symbol. The first occurrence in print is claimed to be from 1790s, by a Philadelphia printerArchibald Binny, creator of theMonticello typeface.[6] The $1United States Note issued by the United States in 1869 included a large symbol consisting of a 'U' with the right bar overlapping an 'S' like a single-bar dollar sign, as well as a very small double-stroke dollar sign in the legal warning against forgerysee pictue.
It is still uncertain, however, how the dollar sign came to represent the Spanish American peso. There are currently several competing hypotheses:
The following theories seem to have been discredited or contradicted by documentary evidence:
The numerous currencies called "dollar" use the dollar sign to express money amounts. The sign is also generally used for the many currencies called "peso" (except thePhilippine peso, which uses the symbol "₱"). Within a country the dollar/peso sign may be used alone. In other cases, and to avoid ambiguity in international usage, it is usually combined with other glyphs, e.g. CA$ or Can$ forCanadian dollar. Particularly in professional contexts, the unambiguousISO 4217 three letter code (AUD, MXN, USD, etc.) is preferred.
The dollar sign, alone or in combination with other glyphs, is or was used to denote several currencies with other names, including:
, Cr, NCr, etc.In the United States, Mexico, Australia, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Pacific Island nations, and English-speaking Canada, the sign is writtenbefore the number ("$5"),[b] even though, when the word is written out or spoken, it is putafter the number ("five dollars", "cinco pesos"). The exception is French-speaking Canada, where the dollar symbol usually appears after the number,[24] the same as the spoken order, e.g., "5$".
In Portugal, Brazil, and other parts of thePortuguese Empire, the two-stroke variant of the sign namedcifrão (Portuguese pronunciation:[siˈfɾɐ̃w]ⓘ) has been used as the thousands separator in the national currency, thereal (plural "réis", abbreviated "Rs."). For instance,123500 would be equivalent to123500 réis. This usage is attested in 1775, but may be older by a century or more.[13] The cifrão is always written with two vertical lines like, and is the official sign of theCape Verdean escudo (ISO 4217: CVE).
In 1911, Portugal redefined the national currency as theescudo, worth1000 réis, and divided into 100centavos; but thecifrão continued to be used as thedecimal separator,[25] so that12350 meant123.50 escudos or 123 escudos and 50 centavos. This usage ended in 2002 when the country switched to theeuro. (A similar scheme to use a letter symbol instead of a decimal point is used by theRKM code in electrical engineering since 1952.)
Cape Verde, a republic and former Portuguese colony, similarly switched from the real to their localescudo and centavos in 1914, and retains thecifrão usage as decimals separator as of 2021. Local versions of the Portuguese escudo were for a time created also for other overseas colonies, includingEast Timor (1958–1975),Portuguese India (1958–1961),Angola (1914–1928 and 1958–1977),Mozambique (1914–1980),Portuguese Guinea (1914–1975), andSão Tomé and Príncipe (1914–1977); all using thecifrão as decimals separator.[citation needed]
Brazil retained the real and thecifrão as thousands separator until 1942, when it switched to theBrazilian cruzeiro, with comma as the decimals separator. The dollar sign, officially with one stroke but often rendered with two, was retained as part of the currency symbol"Cr$", so one would writeCr$13,50 for 13 cruzeiros and 50 centavos.[26]
Thecifrão was formerly used by thePortuguese escudo (ISO: PTE) before its replacement by theeuro and by thePortuguese Timor escudo (ISO: TPE) before its replacement by theIndonesian rupiah and theUS dollar.[27] In Portuguese and Cape Verdean usage, thecifrão is placed as a decimal point between the escudo andcentavo values.[28] The name originates in theArabicṣifr (صِفْر), meaning 'zero'.[29]
Outside the Portuguese cultural sphere, theSouth Vietnamese đồng before 1975 used a method similar to thecifrão to separate values of đồng from its decimal subunitxu. For example,750 meant 7 đồng and 50 xu.
In some places and at some times, the one- and two-stroke variants have been used in the same contexts to distinguish between the U.S. dollar and other local currency, such as the formerPortuguese escudo.[25]
However, such usage is not standardized, and theUnicode specification considers the two versions asgraphic variants of the same symbol—atypeface design choice.[30] Computer and typewriter keyboards usually have a single key for that sign, and many character encodings (includingASCII andUnicode) reserve a single numeric code for it. Indeed, dollar signs in the same digital document may be rendered with one or two strokes, if differentcomputer fonts are used, but the underlyingcodepoint U+0024 (ASCII 3610) remains unchanged.
When a specific variant is not mandated by law or custom, the choice is usually a matter of expediency or aesthetic preference. Both versions were used in the US in the 18th century. (An 1861Civil War-era advertisement depicts the two-stroked symbol as a snake.[12]) The two-stroke version seems to be generally less popular today, though used in some "old-style" fonts likeBaskerville.
Because of its use in early American computer applications such as business accounting, the dollar sign is almost universally present in computercharacter sets, and thus has been appropriated for many purposes unrelated to money inprogramming languages andcommand languages.
The dollar sign "$" hasASCII andUnicode code point U+0024 (in Unicode'sLatin-1 block inherited fromASCII).[30]
There are no separate encodings for one- and two-line variants. The choice is typeface-dependent, they areallographs. However, there are three other code points that originate from other East Asian standards: the Taiwanesesmall form variant, the CJKfullwidth form, and the Japaneseemoji. The glyphs for these code points are typically larger or smaller than the primary code point, but the difference is mostly aesthetic or typographic, and the meanings of the symbols are the same.
However, for usage as the special character in various computing applications (see following sections), U+0024 is typically the only code that is recognized.
Support for the two-line variant varies. As of 2019,[update] theUnicode standard considers the distinction between one- and two-bar dollar signs astylistic distinction between fonts, and has no separatecode point for thecifrão. The symbol is not in the October 2019 "pipeline",[33] though it has been requested formally.[25]
Among others, the following fonts display a double-bar dollar sign for code point 0024:[citation needed] regular-weightBaskerville,Big Caslon,Bodoni MT,Garamond: ($)
InLaTeX, with the textcomp package installed, thecifrão () can be input using the command\textdollaroldstyle. However, because offont substitution and the lack of a dedicated code point, the author of an electronic document who uses one of these fonts intending to represent acifrão cannot be sure that every reader will see a double-bar glyph rather than the single barred version. Because of the continued lack of support in Unicode, a single bar dollar sign is frequently employed in its place even for official purposes.[28][34] Where there is any risk of misunderstanding, theISO 4217 three-letter acronym is used.
The characterU+3326 ㌦SQUARE DORU is asquared word version ofドル (doru "dollar", in Japanese).The characterU+5F17 弗CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-5F17 has been formerlyrepurposed as a symbol for dollars in Japan because of its visual similarity.It was alsoread asdoru[35][36]
$ is appended to avariable name to define that variable’sdata type as acharacter string, for example,H$="Hello, world!". In discussion, the variableH$ would be referred to as “H string.”$ is prefixed to names to definevariables in thePHP language and theAutoIt automation script language,scalar variables in thePerl language (seesigil (computer programming)), and global variables in theRuby language. In Perl programming this includes scalar elements ofarrays$array[7] andhashes$hash{foo}.$ introduces an expression that should be evaluated to yield text. Languages that have adopted this convention includePerl,JavaScript,C#,Scala,Groovy andKotlin. Other languages, includingJava andPython, use it to mark the place where the result of an expression elsewhere should be inserted into text.$ is used for defining hexadecimal constants in some variants ofassembly language (such as the Motorola 6800, Motorola 68000 and MOS Technology 6502 assembly languages), inPascal and in Pascal-like languages such asFree Pascal andDelphi.$ is used in theALGOL 68 language to delimittransput format regions.$ is used in theTeXtypesetting language to delimit mathematical regions.$ could be used as an alternative to a quotation mark for delimiting strings.$ can be used to put a visible separation between words in compound identifiers. For example,Some$Name refers to the same thing asSomeName.$ is used as a function application operator.$ is not triggered by a 'Send' command elsewhere in the script.$ as its main symbol, primarily as a function that queries a web page for one or moreHTML elements, but also with other utilities attached to it as properties like$.ajax. ThePrototype.js library defines it similarly for querying.$ can appear inside a class name in aJava class file due toname mangling. For example, if a classOuter has an inner classInner, the compiled class file will be namedOuter$Inner.class.$$.$ sign is used in thePicture clause to depict a floating currency symbol as the left most character. The default symbol is$; however, if theCURRENCY= orCURRENCY SIGN clause is specified, many other symbols can be used.$ sign is used to represent registers.$ sign, when used as an address, meant the address of the instruction in which it appeared.$ sign is used as a statement terminator.$ sign is used as a subsetting operator.$ sign is used as a casting/padding/enumeration/conditional operator.$ sign is prefixed to define a variable.$ sign can be used to markreactive statements.$ marks the end of text displayed with system function 9. CP/M developerGary Kildall never explained the choice and once pointedly remarked that he knew the reason whileBill Gates did not.[37] Prior uses of$ for the "end of line" or "end of text" includeJOVIAL,CMS-2, theQED editor andDECsystem-10 (a known influence on CP/M), which displayed the character to confirm that the user pressed theescape key to complete a line of input.$ is appended to the share name to hide a shared folder or resource. For example,\\server\share will be visible to other computers on a network, while\\server\share$ will be accessible only by explicit reference. Hiding a shared folder or resource will not alter its access permissions but may render it inaccessible to programs or other functions which rely on its visibility. Mostadministrative shares are hidden in this way.$ is used as a line separator in various standard entry attributes such aspostalAddress.$ means "system". It is appended to entities such as the names of system files, the "sender" name in messages sent by the operator, and the default names of system-created files (like compiler output) when no specific name is specified (e.g.,TPF$,NAME$, etc.)$ is used in system variables to separate the application name from the variables specific to that application. For exampleDraw$Dir specifies the directory where the!Draw application is located. It is also used to refer to theroot directory of afile system.$ matches the end of a line or string insed,grep, andPOSIX andPerlregular expressions, as well as the end of a line or the file in text editorsed,ex,vi,pico, and derivatives.The symbol is sometimes used derisively, in place of the letter S, to indicategreed or excess money such as in "Micro$oft", "Di$ney", "Chel$ea" and "GW$"; or supposed overtAmericanization as in "$ky". The dollar sign is also used intentionally to stylize names such asA$AP Rocky,Ke$ha, andTy Dolla $ign or words such as¥€$. In 1872,Ambrose Bierce referred to California governorLeland Stanford as $tealand Landford.[39]
InScrabble notation, a dollar sign is placed after a word to indicate that it is valid according to theNorth American word lists, but not according to the British word lists.[40]
A dollar symbol is used asunit of reactivity for a nuclear reactor,0 $ being the threshold of slow criticality, meaning a steady reaction rate, while1 $ is the threshold ofprompt criticality, which means a nuclear excursion or explosion.[41][42]
In the 1993 version of theTurkmen Latin alphabet $ was used as a transliteration of the Cyrillic letter Ш, in 1999 was replaced by the letter Ş.
000 Rs". Cartório do Colégio do Carmo, Maço 35, n.o 17. apud ALMEIDA, Manuel Lopes in "Livro, livreiros, impressores em documentos da Universidade", Arquivo de Bibliografia Portuguesa, ano X–XII, Atlântida, Coimbra, 1964–66, n o 37–48.The following sections present the complete lists of character entity references
dollar; U+00024 $
Media related toDollar sign at Wikimedia Commons
