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Dollar sign

The dollar sign, also known as peso sign, is a symbol consisting of a capital "S" crossed with one or two vertical strokes ($ or depending on typeface), used to indicate the unit of various currencies around the world, including most currencies denominated "peso" and "dollar". The explicitly double-barred sign is called cifrão in Portuguese.

$
Dollar sign
Other namesPeso sign
In UnicodeU+0024 $ DOLLAR SIGN ($)
Currency
CurrencyMany (see dollar, peso)
Graphical variants
Category

The sign is also used in several compound currency symbols, such as the Brazilian real (R$) and the Nicaraguan córdoba (C$).

The one- and two-stroke version 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. The Unicode computer encoding standard defines a single code for both.

In most English-speaking countries that use that symbol, it is placed to the left of the amount specified, e.g. "$1", read as "one dollar".

History

Use for the Spanish American peso in the late 1700s

The symbol appears in business correspondence in the 1770s from Spanish America, the early independent U.S., British America and Britain, referring to the Spanish American peso,[1][2] also known as "Spanish dollar" or "piece of eight" in British America. Those coins provided the model for the currency that the United States adopted in 1792, and for the larger coins of the new Spanish American republics, such as the Mexican peso, Argentine peso, Peruvian real, and Bolivian sol coins.

With the Coinage 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] but a variety of foreign coins were deemed to be legal tender until the Coinage Act of 1857 ended this status.[4][failed verification][5][failed verification]

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 printer Archibald Binny, creator of the Monticello typeface.[6] The $1 United 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 forgery.[7]

Earlier history of the symbol

It is still uncertain, however, how the dollar sign came to represent the Spanish American peso. There are currently several competing hypotheses:

  • One theory holds that the sign grew out of the Spanish and Spanish American scribal abbreviation "ps" for pesos. A study of late 18th- and early 19th-century manuscripts shows that the s gradually came to be written over the p, developing into a close equivalent to the "$" mark.[8][9][10][11][12] However, there are documents showing the common use of the two-stroke version in Portugal already by 1775.[13]
 
A piece of eight from the Potosí mint, showing the Pillars of Hercules with "S" ribbons, and two "PTSI" monograms at about 4 and 8 o'clock around the edge.
  • Another hypothesis derives the sign from a depiction of the Pillars of Hercules, a classical symbol for two sides of the Strait of Gibraltar, with a ribbon wrapped around each pillar (or both pillars) in the form of an "S". This device is a support element of the Spanish coat of arms, and appeared on the most common real de ocho coins circulating at the time in the Americas and Europe; namely, those minted at the Potosí mint in Bolivia, which operated from 1573 to 1825.[14][10] Indeed, one of the names used for Spanish dollars in Qing Dynasty China was 双柱; 雙柱; shuāngzhù; 'double-pillar'.[15]
  • A variant of the above theory claims that the sign comes from the mark of the mint at Potosí, where a large portion of the Spanish Empire's silver was mined, also featured on those coin, which consisted of the letters "P T S I" superimposed. The core of this monogram is a (single-stroked) "$" sign.[16]
 
Sample ledger with a sign for dollar from John Collins 1686.
  • Yet another hypothesis notes that the English word "dollar" for the Spanish piece of eight originally came (through Dutch daalder) from Joachimsthaler or thaler, a similar large German silver coin which was widely used in Europe. It is therefore conjectured that the dollar sign derived from a symbol consisting of a superimposing S and I or J that was used to denote the German silver coin. Such symbol appears in the 1686 edition of An Introduction to Merchants' Accounts by John Collins.[17] Alternatively, the symbol could have come from a snake and cross emblem on the thaler coins.[6]

Less likely theories

The following theories seem to have been discredited or contradicted by documentary evidence:

  • Some historians have attributed the symbol to Oliver Pollock, a wealthy Irish trader and early supporter of the American Revolution, who used the abbreviation "ps", sometimes run together, in a letter dated 1778.[6][18]
  • In 1937, historian James Alton James claimed that the symbol with two strokes was an adapted design of patriot Robert Morris in 1778, in letters written to Pollock.[19][20][18]
  • In 1939, H. M. Larson suggested that the sign could derive from a combination of the Greek character "psi" (ψ) and "S".[21]
  • Writer Ayn Rand claimed in her 1957 book Atlas Shrugged that the sign started off as a monogram of "US", with a narrow "U" superimposed on the "S", which would have been used on money bags issued by the United States Mint. In her theory, the bottom part of the "U" would have been lost, producing the dollar sign with two vertical lines.[22][6]
  • Authors T. Seijas and J. Frederick noted that the captors of slaves in Spanish territories sometimes branded enslaved people with a symbol very similar to a one-barred dollar sign. Esclavo is Spanish for "slave," and clavo means nail. A dollar sign is S + clavo.[14]
  • A theory often cited in Portuguese speaking countries is that the "S" part of the doubly-stroked sign is a schematic representation of the path followed by the Umayyad Caliphate general Tariq Ibn Ziyad in his conquest of the Visigoth kingdom in 711 CE, and the two strokes represent the Pillars of Hercules that he would have crossed along that path. That symbol would have been engraved in coins commemorating his victory, and then became symbolic of currency in general.[23]

Currencies that use the dollar sign

As symbol of the currency

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 the Philippine 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$ for Canadian dollar.

The dollar sign, alone or in combination with other glyphs, is or was used to denote several currencies with other names, including:

Prefix or suffix

In the United States, Mexico, Australia, Argentina, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Pacific Island nations, and English-speaking Canada, the sign is written before the number ("$5"), even though the word is written or spoken after it ("five dollars", "cinco pesos"). In French-speaking Canada, exceptionally, the dollar symbol usually appears after the number,[24] e.g., "5$". (The cent symbol is written after the number in most countries that use it, e.g., "5¢".)

Use in the Portuguese Empire

In Portugal, Brazil, and other parts of the Portuguese Empire, the two-stroke variant of the sign (with the name cifrão; (Portuguese pronunciation: [siˈfɾɐ̃w] ( listen)) was used as the thousands separator of amounts in the national currency, the real (plural "réis", abbreviated "Rs."): 123 500 meant "123500 réis". This usage is attested in 1775, but may be older by a century or more.[13] It is always written with two vertical lines:  . It is the official sign of the Cape Verdean escudo (ISO 4217: CVE).

In 1911 Portugal redefined the national currency as the escudo, worth 1000 réis, and divided into 100 centavos; but the cifrão continued to be used as the decimal separator,[25] so that 123 50 meant 123.50 escudos or 123 escudos and 50 centavos. This usage ended in 2002 when the country switched to the euro. (A similar scheme to use a letter symbol instead of a decimal point is used by the RKM code in electrical engineering since 1952.)

 
Car for sale in Cape Verde, showing use of the cifrão as decimals separator.

Cape Verde, a republic and former Portuguese colony, similarly switched from the real to their local escudo and centavos in 1914, and retains the cifrão usage as decimals separator as of 2021. Local versions of the Portuguese escudo were for a time created also for other overseas colonies, including East Timor (1958–1975), Portuguese India (1958–1961), Angola (1914–1928 and 1958–1977), Mozambique (1914–1980), Portuguese Guinea (1914–1975), and São Tomé and Príncipe (1914–1977); presumably[clarification needed] all using the cifrão as decimals separator.[citation needed]

Brazil retained the real and the cifrão as thousands separator until 1942, when it switched to the Brazilian 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 write Cr$13,50 for 13 cruzeiros and 50 centavos.[26]

It was formerly used by the Portuguese escudo (ISO: PTE) before its replacement by the euro and by the Portuguese Timor escudo (ISO: TPE) before its replacement by the Indonesian rupiah and the US dollar.[27] In Portuguese and Cape Verdean usage, the cifrão is placed as a decimal point between the escudo and centavo values.[28] The name originates in the Arabic sifr (‏صِفْر‎), meaning 'zero'.[29]

One stroke vs. two strokes

 
Double-barred dollar or Cifrão sign

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 former Portuguese escudo.[25]

However, such usage is not standardized, and furthermore the two versions are generally considered[citation needed] mere graphic variants of the same symbol—a typeface design choice. Computer and typewriter keyboards usually have a single key for that sign, and many character encodings (including ASCII and Unicode) reserve a single numeric code for it. Indeed, dollar signs in the same digital document may be rendered with one or two strokes, if different computer fonts are used. Should that ambiguity be significant, one may use explicit abbreviations (like "US$" or "$NZ"), or ISO 4217 three-letter currency codes (such as USD and MXN) to distinguish different currencies that use the symbol.

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 1861 Civil War-era advertisement depicts the two-stroked symbol as a snake.[18]) The two-stroke version seems to be generally less popular today, though used in some "old-style" fonts like Baskerville.

Use in computer software

Because of its use in early American computer applications such as business accounting, the dollar sign is almost universally present in computer character sets, and thus has been appropriated for many purposes unrelated to money in programming languages and command languages.

Encoding

The dollar sign "$" has Unicode code point U+0024 (inherited from ASCII via Latin-1).

  • U+0024 $ DOLLAR SIGN ($)[a]

There are no separate encodings for one- and two-line variants. The choice is typeface-dependent, they are allographs. However, there are three other code points that originate from other East Asian standards: the Taiwanese small form variant, the CJK fullwidth form, and the Japanese emoji. 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.

  • U+FE69 SMALL DOLLAR SIGN
  • U+FF04 FULLWIDTH DOLLAR SIGN
  • U+1F4B2 💲 HEAVY DOLLAR SIGN

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, the Unicode standard considers the distinction between one- and two-bar dollar signs a stylistic distinction between fonts, and has no separate code point for the cifrão. The symbol is not in the October 2019 'pipeline',[32] but appears to be under active consideration.[33]

The following fonts display a double-bar dollar sign for code point 0024:[citation needed] regular-weight Baskerville, Big Caslon, Bodoni MT, Bradley Hand ITC, Brush Script MT, Garamond, STFangsong, STKaiti, and STSong ($).

In LaTeX, with the textcomp package installed, the cifrão ( ) can be input using the command \textdollaroldstyle.

However, because of font substitution and the lack of a dedicated code point, the author of an electronic document who uses one of these fonts intending to represent a cifrão 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, the ISO 4217 three letter acronym is used.

Programming languages

  • $ was used for defining string variables in older versions of the BASIC language, e.g. CHR$ ($ was often pronounced "string" instead of "dollar" in this use).
  • $ is prefixed to names to define variables in the PHP language and the AutoIt automation script language, scalar variables in the Perl language (see sigil (computer programming)), and global variables in the Ruby language. In Perl programming this includes scalar elements of arrays $array[7] and hashes $hash{foo}.
  • In most shell scripting languages, $ is used to indicate the insertion into strings of environment variables, special variables, input data fields, previous commands, arithmetic computations, and special characters, and for performing translation of localised strings. In the shell script languages of CP/M, DOS, and several Unix-like systems, it is used to insert variable information (such as the current working directory, user name, or sequential command number) in the command prompt.
  • $ is used for defining hexadecimal constants in Pascal-like languages such as Delphi, and in some variants of assembly language.
  • $ is used in the ALGOL 68 language to delimit transput format regions.
  • $ is used in the TeX typesetting language to delimit mathematical regions.
  • In many versions of FORTRAN 66, $ could be used as an alternative to a quotation mark for delimiting strings.
  • In PL/M, $ can be used to put a visible separation between words in compound identifiers. For example, Some$Name refers to the same thing as 'SomeName'.
  • In Haskell, $ is used as a function application operator.
  • In an AutoHotkey script, a hotkey declared with $ is not triggered by a 'Send' command elsewhere in the script.
  • In several JavaScript frameworks such as Prototype.js and jQuery, $ is a common utility class, and is often referred to as the buck.[citation needed] Otherwise, it's a character allowed in identifiers.
  • In JavaScript from ES6 onward it is used inside template literals to insert the value of a variable. For example, if var word = "such" then `as ${word}` would equal 'as such'
  • In C#, $ marks a string literal as an interpolated string.
  • In ASP.NET, the dollar sign used in a tag in the web page indicates an expression will follow it. The expression that follows is .NET language-agnostic, as it will work with C#, VB.NET, or any CLR supported language.
  • In Erlang, the dollar sign precedes character literals. The dollar sign as a character can be written $$.
  • In COBOL the $ sign is used in the Picture clause to depict a floating currency symbol as the left most character. The default symbol is $; however, if the CURRENCY= or CURRENCY SIGN clause is specified, many other symbols can be used.
  • In some assembly languages, such as MIPS, the $ sign is used to represent registers.
  • In Honeywell 6000 series assembler, the $ sign, when used as an address, meant the address of the instruction in which it appeared.
  • In CMS-2, the $ sign is used as a statement terminator.
  • In R, the $ sign is used as a subsetting operator.
  • In Q (programming language from Kx Systems), the $ sign is used as a casting/padding/enumeration/conditional operator.
  • In Sass, the $ sign is prefixed to define a variable.

Operating systems

  • In CP/M and subsequently in all versions of DOS (86-DOS, MS-DOS, PC DOS, more) and derivatives, $ is used as a string terminator (Int 21h with AH=09h).
  • In Microsoft Windows, $ 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. Most administrative shares are hidden in this way.
  • In the LDAP directory access protocol, $ is used as a line separator in various standard entry attributes such as postalAddress.
  • In the UNIVAC EXEC 8 operating system, $ 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.)
  • In RISC OS, $ is used in system variables to separate the application name from the variables specific to that application. For example Draw$Dir specifies the directory where the !Draw application is located. It is also used to refer to the root directory of a file system.

Applications

Other uses

The symbol is sometimes used derisively, in place of the letter S, to indicate greed or excess money such as in "Micro$oft", "Di$ney", "Chel$ea" and "GW$"; or supposed overt Americanisation as in "$ky". The dollar sign is also used intentionally to stylize names such as A$AP Rocky, Ke$ha, and Ty Dolla $ign or words such as ¥€$. In 1872, Ambrose Bierce referred to California governor Leland Stanford as $tealand Landford.[36]

In Scrabble notation, a dollar sign is placed after a word to indicate that it is valid according to the North American word lists, but not according to the British word lists.[37]

A dollar symbol is used as unit of reactivity for a nuclear reactor, $ being the threshold of slow criticality, meaning a steady reaction rate, while 1 $ is the threshold of prompt criticality, which means a nuclear excursion or explosion.[38][39]

The dollar sign was used as a letter in the Turkmen alphabet from 1993 to 1999.[citation needed]

The dollar sign plays an important role in the plot of Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged, with the book's radical Free Market activists adopting it as their insignia.[citation needed]

See also

Explanatory notes

  1. ^ As of April 2022, HTML5 is the only version of HTML that has a named entity for the dollar sign.[30][31]

References

Citations

  1. ^ Kinnaird, Lawrence (July 1976). "The Western Fringe of Revolution". The Western Historical Quarterly. 7 (3): 259. doi:10.2307/967081. JSTOR 967081.
  2. ^ Popular Science (February 1930). "Origin of Dollar Sign is Traced to Mexico". Popular Science: 59. ISSN 0161-7370.
  3. ^ "Section 9 of the Coinage Act of 1792". Memory.loc.gov. Retrieved 24 August 2010.
  4. ^ "Massachusetts Copyright Statute,(1783), p. 370".
  5. ^ "Maryland Copyright Statute (1783)".
  6. ^ a b c d Hephzibah Anderson (2019): "The curious origins of the dollar symbol". Online article at the BBC website, dated 29 May 2019. Accessed on 2021-08-12.
  7. ^ Reverse of $1 United States Note (Greenback), series of 1869
  8. ^ Cajori, Florian (1993) [1929]. A History of Mathematical Notations. Vol. 2. pp. 15–29. ISBN 9780486677668.
  9. ^ Aiton, Arthur S.; Wheeler, Benjamin W. (May 1931). "The First American Mint". The Hispanic American Historical Review. 11 (2): 198. doi:10.1215/00182168-11.2.198. JSTOR 2506275.
  10. ^ a b Nussbaum, Arthur (1957). A History of the Dollar. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 56. The foreign coins remained in circulation [in the United States], and the more important among them, especially the Spanish (including the Mexican) dollars, were declared by Congress on February 9, 1793, to be legal tender. The dollar sign, $, is connected with the peso, contrary to popular belief, which considers it to be an abbreviation of 'U.S.' The two parallel lines represented one of the many abbreviations of 'P,' and the 'S' indicated the plural. The abbreviation '$.' was also used for the peso, and is still used in Argentina.
  11. ^ Riesco Terrero, Ángel (1983). Diccionario de abreviaturas hispanas de los siglos XIII al XVIII: Con un apendice de expresiones y formulas juridico-diplomaticas de uso corriente. Salamanca: Imprenta Varona. p. 350. ISBN 84-300-9090-8.
  12. ^ Bureau of Engraving and Printing. "What is the origin of the $ sign?". Resources: FAQs. Retrieved 8 April 2016.
  13. ^ a b João Joseph Du Beux (1775): Receipt of 270 000 Rs. for purchase by of 50 volumes of the Acta Santorum by the College of the Carmo of Coimbra. Quote: "Recebemos [...] a quantia de Duzentos Settenta mil reis[...] por Clareza passamos este Coimbra 15 de Março de 1775. São 270 000 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.
  14. ^ a b Seijas, Tatiana and Jake Frederick (2017). Spanish Dollars and Sister Republics: The Money That Made Mexico and the United States. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 3–4. ISBN 9781538100462.
  15. ^ Ulrich Theobald (2016): "Qing Period Money: Foreign Silver 'Dollars'". Online article in the website ChinaKnowledge.de - An Encyclopaedia on Chinese History, Literature and Art, dated Apr 13, 2016. Accessed on 2021-08-14.
  16. ^ Sandra Choron and Harry Choron (2011): Money Everything You Never Knew About Your Favorite Thing to Find, Save, Spend & Covet. Chronicle Books LLC 336 pages. ISBN 9781452105598
  17. ^ Florence Edler de Roover. Concerning the Ancestry of the Dollar Sign. - Bulletin of the Business Historical Society. Vol. 19, No. 2 (Apr., 1945), pp. 63-64
  18. ^ a b c Joshua D. Rothman (2018): "The Curious Origins of the Dollar Sign" Online article on the We're History website, dated 2018-04-01. Accessed on 2021-08-12.
  19. ^ James, James Alton (1970) [1937]. Robert Morris: The Life and Times of an Unknown Patriot. Freeport: Books for Libraries Press. p. 356. ISBN 978-0-8369-5527-9.
  20. ^ James, James Alton (1929). "'Robert Morris, Financier of the Revolution in the West'". The Mississippi Valley Historical Review.
  21. ^ Larson, Henrietta M. (October 1939). "Note on Our Dollar Sign". Bulletin of the Business Historical Society. 13 (4): 57–58. doi:10.2307/3111350. JSTOR 3111350.
  22. ^ (2018): "Where did the dollar sign come from?" Online article of the History channel website, dated 2018-08-22. Accessed on 2021-08-12.
  23. ^ (2015): "Origem do Cifrão". Note on the website of the Casa da Moeda do Brasil (Brazilian Mint). Accessed on 2021-08-12.
  24. ^ "Banque de dépannage linguistique - Somme d'argent". Office québécois de la langue française. Retrieved 31 October 2022.
  25. ^ a b Eduardo Marín Silva (22 July 2019). "Currency signs missing in Unicode" (PDF). Unicode Consortium.
  26. ^ (1960): Price "Cr$ 15,00" on the front cover of the 1960-05-07 issue of O Cruzeiro magazine, reproduced on the Muzeez website on 2016-12-105. Accessed on 2021-08-14.
  27. ^ Lisbon-tourist-guide.com. "Portuguese Escudo." 2008.
  28. ^ a b Banco de Cabo Verde. "Moedas 2011-01-22 at the Wayback Machine." Accessed 25 Feb 2011.
  29. ^ Casa da Moeda. "Origem do Cifrão". Casadamoeda.gov.br. Retrieved 11 March 2018.
  30. ^ "24 Character entity references in HTML 4". www.w3.org. The following sections present the complete lists of character entity references
  31. ^ "8.5 Named character references". dollar;   U+00024   $
  32. ^ "Proposed New Characters: The Pipeline". Unicode Consortium. 11 October 2019. Retrieved 26 December 2019.
  33. ^ Eduardo Marín Silva (22 July 2019). "Currency signs missing in Unicode" (PDF). Unicode Consortium. Retrieved 26 December 2019.
  34. ^ Banco Central do Brasil. "Currency table." Accessed 24 Feb 2011.
  35. ^ "Relative & Absolute Cell References in Excel".
  36. ^ Roy Morris (1995). Ambrose Bierce: Alone in Bad Company. Oxford University Press. p. 176. ISBN 9780195126280.
  37. ^ . Tucson Scrabble Club. Archived from the original on 30 August 2011. Retrieved 6 February 2012.
  38. ^ Weinberg, Alvin M.; Wigner, Eugene P. (1958). The Physical Theory of Neutron Chain Reactors. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 595.
  39. ^ "DOE Fundamentals: Nuclear Physics and Reactor Theory: Module 4: Reactor Theory (Reactor Operations)" (PDF). U. S. Department of Energy. n.d. p. 16. Retrieved 25 July 2022.

General and cited sources

External links

  •   Media related to Dollar sign at Wikimedia Commons

dollar, sign, redirects, here, unit, currency, dollar, other, uses, disambiguation, peso, sign, redirects, here, philippine, peso, sign, philippine, peso, sign, technical, reasons, says, redirects, here, television, show, says, technical, reasons, redirects, h. redirects here For the unit of currency see Dollar For other uses see disambiguation Peso sign redirects here For the Philippine peso sign see Philippine peso sign For technical reasons My Dad Says redirects here For the television show see h My Dad Says For technical reasons redirects here For the keyboard symbol see List of emoticons The dollar sign also known as peso sign is a symbol consisting of a capital S crossed with one or two vertical strokes or depending on typeface used to indicate the unit of various currencies around the world including most currencies denominated peso and dollar The explicitly double barred sign is called cifrao in Portuguese Dollar signOther namesPeso signIn UnicodeU 0024 DOLLAR SIGN amp dollar CurrencyCurrencyMany see dollar peso Graphical variantsCategoryThe sign is also used in several compound currency symbols such as the Brazilian real R and the Nicaraguan cordoba C The one and two stroke version 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 The Unicode computer encoding standard defines a single code for both In most English speaking countries that use that symbol it is placed to the left of the amount specified e g 1 read as one dollar Contents 1 History 1 1 Use for the Spanish American peso in the late 1700s 1 2 Earlier history of the symbol 1 3 Less likely theories 2 Currencies that use the dollar sign 2 1 As symbol of the currency 2 1 1 Prefix or suffix 2 2 Use in the Portuguese Empire 3 One stroke vs two strokes 4 Use in computer software 4 1 Encoding 4 2 Programming languages 4 3 Operating systems 4 4 Applications 5 Other uses 6 See also 7 Explanatory notes 8 References 8 1 Citations 8 2 General and cited sources 9 External linksHistory EditUse for the Spanish American peso in the late 1700s Edit The symbol appears in business correspondence in the 1770s from Spanish America the early independent U S British America and Britain referring to the Spanish American peso 1 2 also known as Spanish dollar or piece of eight in British America Those coins provided the model for the currency that the United States adopted in 1792 and for the larger coins of the new Spanish American republics such as the Mexican peso Argentine peso Peruvian real and Bolivian sol coins With the Coinage 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 but a variety of foreign coins were deemed to be legal tender until the Coinage Act of 1857 ended this status 4 failed verification 5 failed verification 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 printer Archibald Binny creator of the Monticello typeface 6 The 1 United 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 forgery 7 Earlier history of the symbol Edit It is still uncertain however how the dollar sign came to represent the Spanish American peso There are currently several competing hypotheses One theory holds that the sign grew out of the Spanish and Spanish American scribal abbreviation ps for pesos A study of late 18th and early 19th century manuscripts shows that the s gradually came to be written over the p developing into a close equivalent to the mark 8 9 10 11 12 However there are documents showing the common use of the two stroke version in Portugal already by 1775 13 A piece of eight from the Potosi mint showing the Pillars of Hercules with S ribbons and two PTSI monograms at about 4 and 8 o clock around the edge Another hypothesis derives the sign from a depiction of the Pillars of Hercules a classical symbol for two sides of the Strait of Gibraltar with a ribbon wrapped around each pillar or both pillars in the form of an S This device is a support element of the Spanish coat of arms and appeared on the most common real de ocho coins circulating at the time in the Americas and Europe namely those minted at the Potosi mint in Bolivia which operated from 1573 to 1825 14 10 Indeed one of the names used for Spanish dollars in Qing Dynasty China was 双柱 雙柱 shuangzhu double pillar 15 A variant of the above theory claims that the sign comes from the mark of the mint at Potosi where a large portion of the Spanish Empire s silver was mined also featured on those coin which consisted of the letters P T S I superimposed The core of this monogram is a single stroked sign 16 Sample ledger with a sign for dollar from John Collins 1686 Yet another hypothesis notes that the English word dollar for the Spanish piece of eight originally came through Dutch daalder from Joachimsthaler or thaler a similar large German silver coin which was widely used in Europe It is therefore conjectured that the dollar sign derived from a symbol consisting of a superimposing S and I or J that was used to denote the German silver coin Such symbol appears in the 1686 edition of An Introduction to Merchants Accounts by John Collins 17 Alternatively the symbol could have come from a snake and cross emblem on the thaler coins 6 Less likely theories Edit The following theories seem to have been discredited or contradicted by documentary evidence Some historians have attributed the symbol to Oliver Pollock a wealthy Irish trader and early supporter of the American Revolution who used the abbreviation ps sometimes run together in a letter dated 1778 6 18 In 1937 historian James Alton James claimed that the symbol with two strokes was an adapted design of patriot Robert Morris in 1778 in letters written to Pollock 19 20 18 In 1939 H M Larson suggested that the sign could derive from a combination of the Greek character psi ps and S 21 Writer Ayn Rand claimed in her 1957 book Atlas Shrugged that the sign started off as a monogram of US with a narrow U superimposed on the S which would have been used on money bags issued by the United States Mint In her theory the bottom part of the U would have been lost producing the dollar sign with two vertical lines 22 6 Authors T Seijas and J Frederick noted that the captors of slaves in Spanish territories sometimes branded enslaved people with a symbol very similar to a one barred dollar sign Esclavo is Spanish for slave and clavo means nail A dollar sign is S clavo 14 A theory often cited in Portuguese speaking countries is that the S part of the doubly stroked sign is a schematic representation of the path followed by the Umayyad Caliphate general Tariq Ibn Ziyad in his conquest of the Visigoth kingdom in 711 CE and the two strokes represent the Pillars of Hercules that he would have crossed along that path That symbol would have been engraved in coins commemorating his victory and then became symbolic of currency in general 23 Currencies that use the dollar sign EditAs symbol of the currency Edit 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 the Philippine 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 for Canadian dollar The dollar sign alone or in combination with other glyphs is or was used to denote several currencies with other names including Brazilian cruzeiro various currencies all defunct C R S displaystyle mathrm CRS Vert C r S displaystyle mathrm CrS Vert M c r S displaystyle mathrm McrS Vert etc Brazilian real R Ethiopian birr until 1976 E Macanese pataca MOP Nicaraguan cordoba C Samoan tala a transliteration of the word dollar Tongan paʻanga T Malaya and British Borneo dollar 1957 1967 Malaysian ringgit 1967 1997 M S displaystyle mathrm MS Vert Prefix or suffix Edit In the United States Mexico Australia Argentina New Zealand Hong Kong Pacific Island nations and English speaking Canada the sign is written before the number 5 even though the word is written or spoken after it five dollars cinco pesos In French speaking Canada exceptionally the dollar symbol usually appears after the number 24 e g 5 The cent symbol is written after the number in most countries that use it e g 5 Use in the Portuguese Empire Edit In Portugal Brazil and other parts of the Portuguese Empire the two stroke variant of the sign with the name cifrao Portuguese pronunciation siˈfɾɐ w listen was used as the thousands separator of amounts in the national currency the real plural reis abbreviated Rs 123 500 meant 123500 reis This usage is attested in 1775 but may be older by a century or more 13 It is always written with two vertical lines It is the official sign of the Cape Verdean escudo ISO 4217 CVE In 1911 Portugal redefined the national currency as the escudo worth 1000 reis and divided into 100 centavos but the cifrao continued to be used as the decimal separator 25 so that 123 50 meant 123 50 escudos or 123 escudos and 50 centavos This usage ended in 2002 when the country switched to the euro A similar scheme to use a letter symbol instead of a decimal point is used by the RKM code in electrical engineering since 1952 Car for sale in Cape Verde showing use of the cifrao as decimals separator Cape Verde a republic and former Portuguese colony similarly switched from the real to their local escudo and centavos in 1914 and retains the cifrao usage as decimals separator as of 2021 Local versions of the Portuguese escudo were for a time created also for other overseas colonies including East Timor 1958 1975 Portuguese India 1958 1961 Angola 1914 1928 and 1958 1977 Mozambique 1914 1980 Portuguese Guinea 1914 1975 and Sao Tome and Principe 1914 1977 presumably clarification needed all using the cifrao as decimals separator citation needed Brazil retained the real and the cifrao as thousands separator until 1942 when it switched to the Brazilian 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 write Cr 13 50 for 13 cruzeiros and 50 centavos 26 It was formerly used by the Portuguese escudo ISO PTE before its replacement by the euro and by the Portuguese Timor escudo ISO TPE before its replacement by the Indonesian rupiah and the US dollar 27 In Portuguese and Cape Verdean usage the cifrao is placed as a decimal point between the escudo and centavo values 28 The name originates in the Arabic sifr ص ف ر meaning zero 29 One stroke vs two strokes Edit Double barred dollar or Cifrao sign See also Pound sign Double bar style 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 former Portuguese escudo 25 However such usage is not standardized and furthermore the two versions are generally considered citation needed mere graphic variants of the same symbol a typeface design choice Computer and typewriter keyboards usually have a single key for that sign and many character encodings including ASCII and Unicode reserve a single numeric code for it Indeed dollar signs in the same digital document may be rendered with one or two strokes if different computer fonts are used Should that ambiguity be significant one may use explicit abbreviations like US or NZ or ISO 4217 three letter currency codes such as USD and MXN to distinguish different currencies that use the symbol 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 1861 Civil War era advertisement depicts the two stroked symbol as a snake 18 The two stroke version seems to be generally less popular today though used in some old style fonts like Baskerville Use in computer software EditBecause of its use in early American computer applications such as business accounting the dollar sign is almost universally present in computer character sets and thus has been appropriated for many purposes unrelated to money in programming languages and command languages Encoding Edit The dollar sign has Unicode code point U 0024 inherited from ASCII via Latin 1 U 0024 DOLLAR SIGN amp dollar a There are no separate encodings for one and two line variants The choice is typeface dependent they are allographs However there are three other code points that originate from other East Asian standards the Taiwanese small form variant the CJK fullwidth form and the Japanese emoji 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 U FE69 SMALL DOLLAR SIGN U FF04 FULLWIDTH DOLLAR SIGN U 1F4B2 HEAVY DOLLAR SIGNHowever 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 the Unicode standard considers the distinction between one and two bar dollar signs a stylistic distinction between fonts and has no separate code point for the cifrao The symbol is not in the October 2019 pipeline 32 but appears to be under active consideration 33 The following fonts display a double bar dollar sign for code point 0024 citation needed regular weight Baskerville Big Caslon Bodoni MT Bradley Hand ITC Brush Script MT Garamond STFangsong STKaiti and STSong In LaTeX with the textcomp package installed the cifrao S displaystyle mathrm S Vert can be input using the command textdollaroldstyle However because of font substitution and the lack of a dedicated code point the author of an electronic document who uses one of these fonts intending to represent a cifrao 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 the ISO 4217 three letter acronym is used Programming languages Edit was used for defining string variables in older versions of the BASIC language e g CHR was often pronounced string instead of dollar in this use is prefixed to names to define variables in the PHP language and the AutoIt automation script language scalar variables in the Perl language see sigil computer programming and global variables in the Ruby language In Perl programming this includes scalar elements of arrays span class nv array span span class p span span class mi 7 span span class p span and hashes span class nv hash span span class p span span class n foo span span class p span In most shell scripting languages is used to indicate the insertion into strings of environment variables special variables input data fields previous commands arithmetic computations and special characters and for performing translation of localised strings In the shell script languages of CP M DOS and several Unix like systems it is used to insert variable information such as the current working directory user name or sequential command number in the command prompt is used for defining hexadecimal constants in Pascal like languages such as Delphi and in some variants of assembly language is used in the ALGOL 68 language to delimit transput format regions is used in the TeX typesetting language to delimit mathematical regions In many versions of FORTRAN 66 could be used as an alternative to a quotation mark for delimiting strings In PL M can be used to put a visible separation between words in compound identifiers For example Some Name refers to the same thing as SomeName In Haskell is used as a function application operator In an AutoHotkey script a hotkey declared with is not triggered by a Send command elsewhere in the script In several JavaScript frameworks such as Prototype js and jQuery is a common utility class and is often referred to as the buck citation needed Otherwise it s a character allowed in identifiers In JavaScript from ES6 onward it is used inside template literals to insert the value of a variable For example if span class kd var span span class w span span class nx word span span class w span span class o span span class w span span class s2 such span then span class sb as span span class si span span class nx word span span class si span span class sb span would equal as such In C marks a string literal as an interpolated string In ASP NET the dollar sign used in a tag in the web page indicates an expression will follow it The expression that follows is NET language agnostic as it will work with C VB NET or any CLR supported language In Erlang the dollar sign precedes character literals The dollar sign as a character can be written In COBOL the sign is used in the Picture clause to depict a floating currency symbol as the left most character The default symbol is however if the CURRENCY or CURRENCY SIGN clause is specified many other symbols can be used In some assembly languages such as MIPS the sign is used to represent registers In Honeywell 6000 series assembler the sign when used as an address meant the address of the instruction in which it appeared In CMS 2 the sign is used as a statement terminator In R the sign is used as a subsetting operator In Q programming language from Kx Systems the sign is used as a casting padding enumeration conditional operator In Sass the sign is prefixed to define a variable Operating systems Edit In CP M and subsequently in all versions of DOS 86 DOS MS DOS PC DOS more and derivatives is used as a string terminator Int 21h with AH 09h In Microsoft Windows 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 Most administrative shares are hidden in this way In the LDAP directory access protocol is used as a line separator in various standard entry attributes such as postalAddress In the UNIVAC EXEC 8 operating system 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 In RISC OS is used in system variables to separate the application name from the variables specific to that application For example Draw Dir specifies the directory where the Draw application is located It is also used to refer to the root directory of a file system Applications Edit Microsoft Excel 35 and other spreadsheet software use the dollar sign to denote a fixed row fixed column reference or an absolute cell reference The dollar sign introduces a subfield delimiter in computer coding of library catalog records matches the end of a line or string in sed grep and POSIX and Perl regular expressions as well as the end of a line or the file in text editors ed ex vi pico and derivatives Other uses EditThe symbol is sometimes used derisively in place of the letter S to indicate greed or excess money such as in Micro oft Di ney Chel ea and GW or supposed overt Americanisation as in ky The dollar sign is also used intentionally to stylize names such as A AP Rocky Ke ha and Ty Dolla ign or words such as In 1872 Ambrose Bierce referred to California governor Leland Stanford as tealand Landford 36 In Scrabble notation a dollar sign is placed after a word to indicate that it is valid according to the North American word lists but not according to the British word lists 37 A dollar symbol is used as unit of reactivity for a nuclear reactor 0 being the threshold of slow criticality meaning a steady reaction rate while 1 is the threshold of prompt criticality which means a nuclear excursion or explosion 38 39 The dollar sign was used as a letter in the Turkmen alphabet from 1993 to 1999 citation needed The dollar sign plays an important role in the plot of Ayn Rand s novel Atlas Shrugged with the book s radical Free Market activists adopting it as their insignia citation needed See also EditEuro sign Indian rupee sign Pound sign Ruble sign Rupee sign Spanish dollar Turkish lira sign Yen and yuan sign Won signExplanatory notes Edit As of April 2022 update HTML5 is the only version of HTML that has a named entity for the dollar sign 30 31 References EditCitations Edit Kinnaird Lawrence July 1976 The Western Fringe of Revolution The Western Historical Quarterly 7 3 259 doi 10 2307 967081 JSTOR 967081 Popular Science February 1930 Origin of Dollar Sign is Traced to Mexico Popular Science 59 ISSN 0161 7370 Section 9 of the Coinage Act of 1792 Memory loc gov Retrieved 24 August 2010 Massachusetts Copyright Statute 1783 p 370 Maryland Copyright Statute 1783 a b c d Hephzibah Anderson 2019 The curious origins of the dollar symbol Online article at the BBC website dated 29 May 2019 Accessed on 2021 08 12 Reverse of 1 United States Note Greenback series of 1869 Cajori Florian 1993 1929 A History of Mathematical Notations Vol 2 pp 15 29 ISBN 9780486677668 Aiton Arthur S Wheeler Benjamin W May 1931 The First American Mint The Hispanic American Historical Review 11 2 198 doi 10 1215 00182168 11 2 198 JSTOR 2506275 a b Nussbaum Arthur 1957 A History of the Dollar New York Columbia University Press p 56 The foreign coins remained in circulation in the United States and the more important among them especially the Spanish including the Mexican dollars were declared by Congress on February 9 1793 to be legal tender The dollar sign is connected with the peso contrary to popular belief which considers it to be an abbreviation of U S The two parallel lines represented one of the many abbreviations of P and the S indicated the plural The abbreviation was also used for the peso and is still used in Argentina Riesco Terrero Angel 1983 Diccionario de abreviaturas hispanas de los siglos XIII al XVIII Con un apendice de expresiones y formulas juridico diplomaticas de uso corriente Salamanca Imprenta Varona p 350 ISBN 84 300 9090 8 Bureau of Engraving and Printing What is the origin of the sign Resources FAQs Retrieved 8 April 2016 a b Joao Joseph Du Beux 1775 Receipt of 270 000 Rs for purchase by of 50 volumes of the Acta Santorum by the College of the Carmo of Coimbra Quote Recebemos a quantia de Duzentos Settenta mil reis por Clareza passamos este Coimbra 15 de Marco de 1775 Sao 270 000 Rs Cartorio do Colegio do Carmo Maco 35 n o 17 apud ALMEIDA Manuel Lopes in Livro livreiros impressores em documentos da Universidade Arquivo de Bibliografia Portuguesa ano X XII Atlantida Coimbra 1964 66 n o 37 48 a b Seijas Tatiana and Jake Frederick 2017 Spanish Dollars and Sister Republics The Money That Made Mexico and the United States Lanham Rowman amp Littlefield pp 3 4 ISBN 9781538100462 Ulrich Theobald 2016 Qing Period Money Foreign Silver Dollars Online article in the website ChinaKnowledge de An Encyclopaedia on Chinese History Literature and Art dated Apr 13 2016 Accessed on 2021 08 14 Sandra Choron and Harry Choron 2011 Money Everything You Never Knew About Your Favorite Thing to Find Save Spend amp Covet Chronicle Books LLC 336 pages ISBN 9781452105598 Florence Edler de Roover Concerning the Ancestry of the Dollar Sign Bulletin of the Business Historical Society Vol 19 No 2 Apr 1945 pp 63 64 a b c Joshua D Rothman 2018 The Curious Origins of the Dollar Sign Online article on the We re History website dated 2018 04 01 Accessed on 2021 08 12 James James Alton 1970 1937 Robert Morris The Life and Times of an Unknown Patriot Freeport Books for Libraries Press p 356 ISBN 978 0 8369 5527 9 James James Alton 1929 Robert Morris Financier of the Revolution in the West The Mississippi Valley Historical Review Larson Henrietta M October 1939 Note on Our Dollar Sign Bulletin of the Business Historical Society 13 4 57 58 doi 10 2307 3111350 JSTOR 3111350 2018 Where did the dollar sign come from Online article of the History channel website dated 2018 08 22 Accessed on 2021 08 12 2015 Origem do Cifrao Note on the website of the Casa da Moeda do Brasil Brazilian Mint Accessed on 2021 08 12 Banque de depannage linguistique Somme d argent Office quebecois de la langue francaise Retrieved 31 October 2022 a b Eduardo Marin Silva 22 July 2019 Currency signs missing in Unicode PDF Unicode Consortium 1960 Price Cr 15 00 on the front cover of the 1960 05 07 issue of O Cruzeiro magazine reproduced on the Muzeez website on 2016 12 105 Accessed on 2021 08 14 Lisbon tourist guide com Portuguese Escudo 2008 a b Banco de Cabo Verde Moedas Archived 2011 01 22 at the Wayback Machine Accessed 25 Feb 2011 Casa da Moeda Origem do Cifrao Casadamoeda gov br Retrieved 11 March 2018 24 Character entity references in HTML 4 www w3 org The following sections present the complete lists of character entity references 8 5 Named character references dollar U 00024 Proposed New Characters The Pipeline Unicode Consortium 11 October 2019 Retrieved 26 December 2019 Eduardo Marin Silva 22 July 2019 Currency signs missing in Unicode PDF Unicode Consortium Retrieved 26 December 2019 Banco Central do Brasil Currency table Accessed 24 Feb 2011 Relative amp Absolute Cell References in Excel Roy Morris 1995 Ambrose Bierce Alone in Bad Company Oxford University Press p 176 ISBN 9780195126280 Scrabble Glossary Tucson Scrabble Club Archived from the original on 30 August 2011 Retrieved 6 February 2012 Weinberg Alvin M Wigner Eugene P 1958 The Physical Theory of Neutron Chain Reactors Chicago University of Chicago Press p 595 DOE Fundamentals Nuclear Physics and Reactor Theory Module 4 Reactor Theory Reactor Operations PDF U S Department of Energy n d p 16 Retrieved 25 July 2022 General and cited sources Edit Cajori Florian 1993 A History of Mathematical Notations Reprint ed New York Dover ISBN 0 486 67766 4 Contains section on the history of the dollar sign with much documentary evidence supporting the pesos hypothesis Cuhaj George 2009 Standard Catalog of United States Paper Money 28th ed Krause Publications ISBN 978 0 89689 939 1 Ovason David 30 November 2004 The Secret Symbols of the Dollar Bill Reprint ed Harper Paperbacks ISBN 0 06 053045 6 External links Edit Media related to Dollar sign at Wikimedia Commons Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Dollar sign amp oldid 1157783894, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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