Talk:Dollar sign

created a new page for the dollar sign languages
created a new page for the dollar sign languages, like the other languages. There are many uses for the sign that don't have anything to do with the dollar.

British Dollars
In pre-decimal coinage, 10 shillings was known as a 'dollar' in slang and 5 shillings was sometimes known as 'half a dollar'. It should be noted that Australian, New Zealand, Jamacan and possible other commonwealth dollars were created from their local 10 shilling denomination. All they did was than create a 'cent' as one hundreth of ten shillings (dollar). Britain decimalised making twenty shillings (sovereign) the main unit instead of ten shillings (dollar) and creating 'new pence' as a hundreth of twenty shillings (pound)

As a kid in the UK I remeber the 'half-a-crown' piece being called in slang 'half a dollar'. Post WW11 a pound was worth 4 US dollars, thus a dollar was worth 5 shillings and the 2s6d piece ('half-a-crown') was 'half- a - dollar'

There were coins actually officially named dollars.

I quote from http://www.ex.ac.uk/~RDavies/arian/dollar.html

'In 1797, owing to a desperate shortage of silver coins, the Bank of England issues altered foreign coins from its reserves. Half a million pounds worth of Spanish dollars issued by King Charles IV were over-stamped with a small engraving of George III. The re-issued coins, with a value of 4 shillings and 9 pence, attracted ridicule. "Two Kings' heads and not worth a crown" was one witticism. (A 'crown' in this context meant 5 shillings, "half-a-crown", sometimes colloquially known as "half-a-dollar", being a common coin before decimalisation in 1971). A cruder, description was "the head of a fool stamped on the neck of an ass". The issue failed because over-stamping was also applied unofficially to the plentiful supplies of light or base Spanish dollars.

A few years later a more successful issue of dollars was made by the Bank of England. In 1804 Matthew Boulton, the business partner of the steam engine pioneer James Watt, was employed to erase completely the existing design on full-weight Spanish coins and stamp them as Bank of England Five Shilling Dollars. '

These may be worth incorporating in some way.

Merge incomplete
Per this merge discussion, is to be merged into this article. The discusion has a "Merge done" note by. But I don't think the merge is "complete". First of all, cifrão is defined diferent from (more specific than) the dollar sign. This distinction should be explicit, and more prominent: in the lede (bolded name added), present in the TOC, and throughout in the prose. However, current text repeatedly states that they are the same. DePiep (talk) 14:57, 25 September 2022 (UTC)
 * My reading of the discussion at Talk:Cifrão any difference of the terms was contentious. Certainly there are two glyphs, but what to call them in English is discussed in Dollar sign. If you think that the lede is inconsistent with the body, then please do change it in the usual way. That is, the merge is complete, but improving the article never ends! Klbrain (talk) 04:54, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes that's what the talkpage discussion says&mdash;for being mergeable. But the cifrão article, and real life sources, say that cifrão is defined distinctly. So that should be incorporated into this article, from top to bottom (eg, dedicated section for starters). So not just lede inconsistent, I say that current body is inconsistent with cifrão article content. DePiep (talk) 06:10, 26 September 2022 (UTC)
 * FYI, the cifrão (=double barred) is defined to be the currency sign in places, explicitly not the single-barred one. I propose you revisit the merged page, and incorporate those texts into this article. Or others can do that. (Unless you oppose this notion altogether, in that case I'd ask you to explain why it's irrelevant). -DePiep (talk) 08:01, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

Weights on theories
From the current version of the article: "It is still uncertain, however, how the dollar sign came to represent the Spanish American peso. There are currently several competing hypotheses:" Having looked at the citations, the "peso abbreviation" theory seems to be the most properly cited, and the only one with RSes that have actual evidence. Do we want to rearrange this section a bit to reflect that? Arcorann (talk) 12:43, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

How to be sure that what we see is what they get
is rightly concerned that if a visitor has changed their default font to one that displays a dollar sign with two lines, the current text (which assumes a one line font) will make no sense. Unfortunately their solution (to replace the character with an image of a one line symbol) introduces a worse problem. That is because we have far more visitors who have a visual disability than those few who change the default font. As it is, we have to use an image for the cifraō, but that is because it has no Unicode code-point.

There is a way tho deliver the effect that LauritzT wants to achieve, and that is to state a font explicitly using span style, choosing one of the web-safe fonts whose behaviour we can guarantee: that way we achieve WYSIWYG. I don't have time to add the detail right now but will do so within 24 hours. 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 00:19, 29 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Here are some font samples
 * Times New Roman $
 * Courier New $
 * Verdana $
 * Trebuchet MS $
 * Georgia $


 * IMO, the clearest of these is Courier New, closely followed by Verdana. For our purposes, Trebuchet must be ruled out. Does anyone have a strong preference?
 * I will notify wp:WikiProject Linux of this discussion because all of these fonts are proprietary so we will need to offer a fall-back font.
 * Any other comments? --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 15:53, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
 * ✅ --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 20:22, 19 March 2024 (UTC)