Pound sign
฿ • ₵ • ¢ • $ • ₡ • B/. • ₫ • € • ƒ • ₲ • ₭
£ • ₤ • Lm • ₥ • ₦ • ₱ • P • R • Sk • ₨
৲ • S/. • ৳ • R$ • $ • ₮ • ₩ • ¥ • zł • ₴ • ₪
apostrophe ( ’ ' ) |
Interword separation |
spaces ( ) ( ) ( ) |
General typography |
ampersand ( & ) |
Uncommon typography |
asterism ( ⁂ ) |
The pound sign ("₤" or later more commonly in the UK "£") is the symbol for the pound sterling, the currency of the United Kingdom (UK), and for some currencies of the same name in other countries. Both symbols derive from librum, the basic Roman unit of weight (about 0.329 kg), in turn derived from the Latin word for scales or balance. The pound became a British unit of weight, and the pound currency unit was so named because it was originally the value of 1 pound Tower Weight (326 g) of fine (pure) silver. Incidentally, the pre-decimalisation penny (of which 240 made £1) took the symbol d from the Latin word denarius, the Roman 'penny'.
The ISO 4217 currency code is GBP
(from the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code for the UK and the initial letter of pound). Occasionally the abbreviation UKP is also seen.
The pound sign, like the dollar sign ("$"), is usually placed before the number (i.e. "£12,000" and not "12,000£"), and is usually not separated from the following number, or is separated only by a thin space.
The symbol "₤" is also known as the lira sign. In Italy, prior to the adoption of the euro, the symbol was used as an alternative to the more usual L to indicate prices in lire (but always with double horizontal lines).
The symbol "£" has Unicode code point U+00A3 (inherited from Latin-1)[1]. It has a HTML entity reference of £ and has an XML decimal entity reference of £.
The symbol "₤" has Unicode code point U+20A4, decimal entity reference ₤.