Pound sign

The pound sign (£) is the special symbol used for the pound, which is the currency of the United Kingdom and its related areas like the Crown Dependencies and British Overseas Territories. It was also used in the past for the currencies of Great Britain and the Kingdom of England. Other countries with currencies called "pound," such as Egypt and Syria, also use this symbol. People sometimes draw the pound sign with one line or two lines across the middle, but since 1975, the Bank of England has always used the one-line version on its paper money.

In the United States, the term "pound sign" is often used to mean the symbol #, which is also called the number sign. In Canada, the words "pound sign" can refer to either the £ symbol or the # symbol, depending on the context.

Origin

The pound sign (£) comes from the Latin letter L, which stood for libra pondo. This was the basic unit of weight in the Roman Empire, and libra meant scales or a balance. Over time, the pound became an English unit of weight, defined as a certain amount of sterling silver.

The exact date when the lines were added to the L to create the £ sign is unknown. However, a cheque from 1661 shows the £ sign clearly. By 1694, when the Bank of England was founded, the symbol was commonly used. Even later, the simple letter L was still used in printing until the 19th century.

Usage

The pound sign (£) is placed before numbers, like £12,000, with no space or just a small space in between. In the UK, we just use the symbol as it is. However, in countries like Egypt and Lebanon, they add a letter to avoid confusion, such as E£ or £E and £L. In international banking and foreign exchange operations, people usually prefer to use the ISO 4217 currency code, like GBP for British pounds or EGP for Egyptian pounds, instead of the symbol.

Other English variants

In most types of English, except American English, the symbol £ is called the pound sign. In Canada, the symbol # is sometimes also called the pound sign, but it is more often known as the number sign. When using a telephone, people in the United States often call the # symbol the "pound key."

In American English, the term "pound sign" usually refers to the symbol #, which is also called the number sign. Like in Canada, the # symbol has many other uses.

Historic variants

The pound sign (£) has been drawn in different ways over time. Since 1975, the Bank of England has only used the one-bar style on its banknotes. Before that, both one-bar and two-bar styles were used.

In old metal fonts from the 1700s, the pound sign looked like an upside-down italic uppercase J. Today, computers use one special character for the pound sign, no matter which style is shown.

Currencies that use the pound sign

The pound sign (£) is used for several currencies around the world. Countries and territories that currently use the pound sign include Egypt for the Egyptian pound, the Falkland Islands for the Falkland Islands pound, Gibraltar for the Gibraltar pound, Guernsey for the Guernsey pound, the Isle of Man for the Manx pound, Saint Helena for the Saint Helena pound, South Sudan for the South Sudanese pound, Syria for the Syrian pound, and the United Kingdom for the Pound sterling.

In the past, many other places also used the pound sign for their money. This includes various American Colonies such as Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Virginia. Other former users include Australia, The Bahamas, Bermuda, British Mandatory Palestine, Canada, Cyprus, Fiji, The Gambia, Ghana, Ireland, Israel, Malta, Newfoundland, New Zealand, Rhodesia, South Africa, Tonga, Western Samoa, and Yemen.

Use with computers

The pound sign (£) is included in the Unicode standard at U+00A3 £ POUND SIGN (£). Whether it appears with one or two bars depends on the font design, but the code remains the same.

Early computers often had limited character sets. For example, the UK version of ISO 646 used the £ symbol in place of the # symbol. Different devices used various positions for the £ symbol, such as MS-DOS on the IBM PC and the BBC Ceefax system. Each computer system had its own way of encoding the £ symbol.

Other uses

The British political party UK Independence Party used a logo based on the pound sign. This showed the party's opposition to adopting the euro and to the European Union.

Long ago, from 1993 to 1995, the pound sign was used as a capital letter in a special alphabet of a country called Turkmenistan. Its lowercase form was a letter called the long s.