Talk:Dollar sign/Archive 1

Portuguese cifrão connection
There is an obvious connection between the dollar sign and the cifrão sign. There must be some kind of historical connection between the two that is disregarded in this article. Has anyone ever heard of this? It could be interesting to make some further research on this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.180.219.88 (talk) 23:54, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

the table
I changed around the table. Really, only the code of it. I couldn't get the padding thing to work correctly. Could someone correct it? I hope whoever it may concern enjoys the reworking. It's easier to deal with now. -- D. F. Schmidt (talk) 07:58, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Yuan/元

 * In China, base unit of the official currency Renminbi is called "Yuan" (&#20803; or &#22278;, with a symbol ¥). The "yuan" is, in fact, a colloquial form of the word "dollar". Spanish dollars were widely circulated in China in the late 19th century. When China adopted its the first national currency in 1914, the base unit was called "Yuan" , which means "dollar". A "yuan" at that time was a coin containing exactly the same amount of silver as a Spanish dollar.

Who the hell comes up with this crap? The word "yuan" (元) predates any Spanish influence by several hundred years. Like, say, the Yuan Dynasty? Hell, the use of coins in China is BC-era by itself. You expect me to believe the Chinese waited a couple of thousand years to name them?

Yuan/元 is a measure word for small round things among a host of other meanings. Coins, being small round things, invariably got enumerated with yuan/元. Further, claiming that this is the colloquialism is utter nonsense. The colloquialism for money's measure word (the primary unit, not the "dime" or "penny" equivalents) is kuai/块. So the article has managed to get everything--absolutely everything--wrong on this point.

Needless to say it's getting deleted. --MTR (&#20005;&#21152;&#21326;) 05:20, 12 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Not really. The word "yuan", like any Chinese word, has multiple meanings. The word "元" was not created for the meaning of dollar, it was just adopted for that purpose. Although it is true that the word "圓" means round object, that is not origin or the reason why it is used to called the currency now being used.


 * After the Ming Dynasty, the Chinese have been using a dual currency system. For large amounts, the unit was silver tales (銀兩). The Chinese did not have the habit of minting gold or silver into coins like the Europeans. The silver was rather minted into bars and measured by weight. 兩 means "tale" is a weight unit. While the currency for smaller trades was copper coins minted by the royal government, and the unit was by enumeration rather than weight. But one single coin is counted as one "chin" "錢".  Coins stringed together (that's the purpose of the hole in Chinese coins) is called a 吊 or string. "圓" was NOT the unit for counting the indigenous coins minted locally by the Chinese. At the same time, trades with the foreign nations were carried out using Spanish dollars, silver coins which were called 銀圓, (probably because they are round) and they were enumerated, counted as "銀圓".


 * The use of 元 or 圓 as a unit of currency in China did not happen until 1866, when the Hong Kong government at that time started minted silver coins carrying the same amount of silver as the Spanish dollars and called them "Hong Kong One Dollar" 香港壹圓. It was also the first time when the word "圓" or "元" was used as unit of currency, that took the meaning of the word "yuan" or 圓 out from its original meaning of the Spanish dollar. But the character "yuan" "圓" or "元" still means, exactly, "dollar".


 * In China, the first basic national currency adopted in 1914 was a silver coin equivalent to a Spanish dollar, that was also called "壹圓" or "one yuan". Nicknamed "袁大頭", this unit was supposed to be the national unit for currency, but it never totally replaced silver tales for book-keeping purposes. It was 1934 when the Nationalist government passed laws to abandon use of "tales" as the unit of currency, and all accounting must be done with yuan.


 * I think the original article had it correct. It is just there're more history on the word 圓 and currencies in China than you are aware of.

24.205.90.226 23:25, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Yen
From yen:
 * The yen was originally written as the same way as the Chinese Yuan (&#22291; pinyin yuan2). Modern Japanese writings use a character (&#20870;) which is different from the one used in simplified Chinese (&#20803;). The Latinized symbol for the Yen however, is identical to the one for the Yuan, although the PRC tends to use one crossbar instead of two.
 * Yen literally means a "round object" in Japanese, as the Yuan in Chinese.

In the article:
 * In China, base unit of the official currency Renminbi is called "Yuan" (&#20803; or &#22278;, with a symbol ¥). The "yuan" is, in fact, a colloquial form of the word "dollar". Spanish dollars were widely circulated in China in the late 19th century. When China adopted its the first national currency in 1914, the base unit was called "Yuan" , which means "dollar". A "yuan" at that time was a coin containing exactly the same amount of silver as a Spanish dollar.

--Error 23:56, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * The word &#20803; or &#22278; literally means "round" does not mean it is the origin of the name. Coins minted by the Chinese were round, but they were not called &#22278;, they were 錢 .  圓 , or its proper name 銀圓, refers to Spanish silver dollars which were counted, in contrary to 銀兩 (silver tales) which were weighted. In 1866 the silver coins minted in Hong Kong were called in Chinese 壹圓 , in English "One Dollar". The "Yuan" &#20803; or &#22278; is just another translation of the "Dollar" . Not sure about Japanese Yen but it is possible that the word has the same heritage.  24.205.90.226 17:32, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

Dollar Slang
Have added "cheese" and "cheddar" to the list of slang words for dollar. "Cheese" is used in Jay-Z's "Big Pimpin," "Cheddar" can be found at http://www.thesource4ym.com/teenlingo/
 * Alright, fair enough. I have added this to the list of sources in the article.[[Image:Weather rain.png]] Soothing R  07:21, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Jay-Z does not say "spending cheese." http://www.amiright.com/misheard/song/bigpimpin.shtml Additionaly, most internet lyric data bases (searched through Google) show "spendin' G's" -GLewis, March 31

merge
I completely agree with the merging of that section into this page. I'ts like having two articles for the same thing. 63.231.145.101 21:35, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Merge I agree. --Macrowiz 20:22, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Yep, merge. Uh-huh. Yep. --SausMeester 22:57, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I disagree as other countries exist that use the dollar sign.
 * The section in "US Dollar" has more (or at least some) information that isn't in this page; it should all be merged into the "Dollar sign" page. Appropriate info could be left on the former page. And if it is such a big deal, rename this page to "US Dollar Sign." -GLewis, March 31
 * I would disagree with this being merged into the dollar article. The reason for this is because the dollar symbol is used for more than just money.  One example would be that the $ serves as the command prompt in several different computer operating systems.
 * JesseG 20:52, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I think some commenters misunderstood the proposal. I do not want to move this article into the U.S. Dollar article.  I want to move some information from the U.S. Dollar article to here, and then have the U.S. Dollar article refer readers to this article for more information about the dollar symbol.

I think someone should mention those burlap sacks with dollar signs on them
Yep. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 75.73.48.43 (talk) 01:13, 2 January 2007 (UTC).

Two vertical lines
This article mentions reasons for why the dollar sign might have two vertical lines without even mentioning anywhere in the article that it is even sometimes written with two vertical lines. Never mind, it's already mentioned. --Brandon Dilbeck 00:46, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Signo pesos
In most Spanish-speaking countries, the symbol is known as signo pesos o signo peso (Peso sign), and not as signo dólar (Dollar sign). Considering also that the sign is in fact the Peso sign and was copied for the US Dollar, I don't think that the article should treat countries like Argentina, Cuba, México or Uruguay as countries that use the Dollar sign.
 * You’re completely right, but we’re talking about English, not Spanish. I know there are English speakers in Central America as well expats in Mexico and Argentina, but I doubt whether even someone from England, or another non-dollar-using country would look at that and say “that's a peso sign.” While I know $ is used for almost every peso currency, I understand peso sign to mean ₱. —Wiki Wikardo 19:50, 25 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Peso sign redirects here. --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 01:34, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * As maybe it should, unless it redirects to Philippine peso, but should the article treat peso sign as a phrase that’s often/ever used to describe that symbol in the English-speaking world? —Wiki Wikardo 18:34, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

History again
Someone went back and changed the History section so that it misrepresents the source-- the BEP page cited specifically refers to the PesoS theory, but the text currently says the page advocates the US theory. I changed this once, and I'm not going to get into an edit war, but this is just wrong. The From 'US' section also gained an unjustified "This is the most likely theory" comment, which should probably also be removed. 72.18.225.169 01:41, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

First use of "$" sign on U.S. money?
Does anyone know if the U.S. Presidential $1 coin in 2007 is the first ever use of the dollar sign on United States money, coins or paper? This question is also on the Presidential $1 coin page, so if you know, please resolve this question there also. 209.26.38.244 14:40, 15 March 2007 (UTC)


 * UPDATE - I found a Coin World article from April 20, 2004 that says it has appeared on a U.S. coin. Quote below. 209.26.38.244 14:29, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Another UPDATE - Apparently, the 2007 U.S. Presidential dollar coins use is the first appearance on a circulating U.S. coin issued by the federal government. See the second article excerpt below this first one. Any editors out there can use this article as a reference to revise the article if they want to. The second article was all about the history of the dollar sign, U.S. and internationally. 209.26.38.244 18:08, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

 "Although the dollar sign does not appear on any current circulating U.S. coins and is rarely encountered on U.S. coins, the American Eagle platinum coins do feature the dollar sign." -- Coin World, April 20, 2004; by Michele Orzano, Coin World staff.  Page 18: "The term "dollar" has a German name and Spanish symbol, but few U.S. coins have ever carried the famous symbol (the exceptions are the American Eagle platinum bullion coins), until now. The $ sign's placement on the reverse of the Presidential dollar coins is the first on a circulating U.S. coin (or at least the first on a U.S. coin intended to circulate)." Page 22, article continues: "Though no federally issued U.S. circulating coin depicted the symbol before the George Washington Presidential dollar, one circulating piece made in the United States does: Templeton Reid struck a pioneer gold $5 piece dated 1830 in [the state of] Georgia. The piece is expensive and rare, with a Red Book price of $240,000 in Extremely Fine condition. The denomination appears as $5 on both sides of the coin, with the $ and 5 widely separated. As noted, the [noncirculating] American Eagle platiunum bullion coins all bear the $ sign in the denominations on the reverse: $10, $25, $50, and $100." -- Coin World, April 16, 2007, "A sign of the times," by Jeff Starck, Coin World staff.

sybolic value of $
I think it would be a good idea to have a section about the symbol beyond just a simple representation of currency. The dollar symbol specifically is strongly associated with capitalism as a philosophy even for countries that have different currency. This can be either a positive or negative association. One example that comes to mind are the dollar brand cigarettes in Atlas Shrugged. I think that book is the source of the U+S=$ theory, which might be good to cite possibly as a way to discount the theory. However, it does show that for a good number of people the symbol has expanded beyond a convenient shorthand for currency. The article should at least touch on this fact. 64.132.80.134 (talk) 20:51, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Proper syntactical usage of the sign?
Shouldn't there be something in the article about proper syntactical usage of the dollar sign? (eg. before the numerical dollar value, etc.)


 * That is not universal. -- Asterion talk 21:31, 15 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes, can someone please add a section about different usages of the dollar sign. It seems like Americans prefer $..., but I grew up writing ...$, and I am confused about what is considered standard style in what languages/countries.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.42.216.163 (talk) 02:43, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

This is in the article at the end of the section "Currencies that use the dollar or peso sign". Americans and Canadians always put the dollar sign before the number. There are other currencies that use the same symbol and I don't know about those currencies, but if you are talking about American or Canadian dollars, then any American or Canadian would tell you that it is correct to put the dollar sign before the number, and incorrect to put it after. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.254.176.10 (talk) 08:23, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

the town of Dollar?
Is there any relationship between the town of Dollar, Scotland and the currency?

The town of Dollar nestles at the foot of the Ochil Hills is central Scotland and is famous for its school "Dollar Academy" which was inagruated in 1818AD by a wealthy merchant (John McNabb).

The town is also known for 15th century Castle Campbell that sits at the top of the Dollar glen between two 'burns': the burn of care and the burn of sorrow which are known for waterfalls and huge slab like rock vennels. The castle was known as the "castle of gloom" before an act of parliment in 1489, approved by James IV.


 * Nope, as a proud Scot I am very sorry to report that that is unlikely. As a (kind-of) Swedish-speaker, it has become my understanding that "dollar" came from "riksdaler", but I have just looked at the Eng Wiki article, and I see that there is a more plausible explanation: Swedish riksdaler: "The daler, like the dollar, was named after the German thaler."
 * I have no idea of the etymology of Dollar, Scotland, but I would hazard a guess that it is from either Pictish or Scottish Gaelic.--Mais oui! 19:16, 3 December 2005 (UTC)


 * That's absolutely correct. The terms "dollar," "daler," and other similar currency terms having European etymologies come from the German thaler.  This term, in turn, comes from the name of a Bohemian town, now in the Czech Republic, Jáchymov, known in German as Joachimsthal.  The ore mined in the town was made into coins, the Joachimsthaler, subsequently shortened to thaler.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.41.13.146 (talk) 18:12, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Potosi mint mark
Can we get a picture of the Potosi mint mark? Drutt (talk) 13:52, 7 November 2009 (UTC)


 * The Potosi mint mark is visible twice in the picture already included in the article: Potosi real. The text on the coin says: "Utra que unum [flower] [Potosi mark] [flower] 1768 [flower] [Potosi sign] [flower]." The picture's caption in the article brings this to the reader's attention. Perhaps someone might want to crop a close up from the picture, but just clicking on it should make it very visible. TriniMuñoz (talk) 19:36, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Dollar/Peso sign
Why did they revert it back to "Dollar sign" only? the symbol is used for both currencies, the Dollar and the Peso, it was perfectly logical and neutral for this article to be named "Dollar/Peso sign", does anyone have a reason for removing (and ignoring) the word Peso form the title? Supaman89 (talk)
 * Because "dollar sign" is the name used in English. If you'd like to post at Requested moves and the people there agree to the change, go for it. I doubt they will though. Recognizance (talk) 08:10, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Dollar sign NEVER "originally" the peso sign
Edited out opening line, but will make a note here in case someone reverts the edit: The dollar sign was never "originally" the peso sign - it was originally the real de ocho sign. The slang for that coin was peso in Spanish and... dollar in English. It's always been the dollar sign in English, so the lede should explain it's used in both contexts without claiming one or the other has priority. — LlywelynII  20:38, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

origin - Tariq ibn Ziyad
At least in Brazil (where we use the two lines version of the sign), it is widely known/accepted that the origin of the symbol is from Tariq ibn Ziyad, and his conquest of Iberian Peninsula. He then ordered his servants to write a map on the coins, showing his path: curved like an S and through the Pillars of Hercules (that being the reason for two lines, not one). Here are some references (they were hard to find, since it's so widely known!):

http://noticias.terra.com.br/educacao/vocesabia/interna/0,,OI3326592-EI8402,00.html (in portuguese) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.123.163.166 (talk) 01:39, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

P.S.: Forgot to say, even being being wide known, most people would know it as something like: "some thing about a map, with a curvy path and then somehing to do with Pillars of Hercules being the two lines" (few people would actually know on the fly the name of the guy or more details (I just googled for "cifrão colunas de hércules origem" to find the reference where I found the man's name)). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.123.163.166 (talk) 01:45, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Should mention that urban legend at cifrao. — LlywelynII  20:39, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Merger with Cifrão?
I think the Cifrão article could and should be adapted into the Dollar sign article. The only thing that separates the cifrão from the dollar sign is that the cifrão always had a double stroke. Which the dollar sign has in many of its variations. Furthermore, the cifrão article isn't very long and can easily be a paragraph in the dollar sign one.

The difference is confusing and only vaguely elaborated upon. Thoughts? SergioGeorgini 11:25, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I understand what you mean. However, as the Cifrão is only one of the multiple theories on the origin of the dollar sign, I doubt it would be widely accepted by other wikipedians. I have nothing at all against the "Cifrão theory" (I even provided a valid reference to back it up, as I believe that any verifiable theory should be listed). Simply, I just do not think that merging Dollar sign to Cifrão would give a balanced picture. And viceversa, I believe Cifrão deserves its own article. The reason why I originally removed the merge-to tag was because the request was badly formed, in the sense that there was no explanation about it on any of the talk pages. Could you please clarify now if you want to merge Cifrão into Dollar sign or Dollar sign into Cifrão? The latter is definitely not going to happen. The former, I personally think is a bad idea, as Cifrão deserves a separate article. Regards, -- Asterion talk 17:20, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
 * I think the cifrão article should be merged into the dollar sign article. There isn't a separate article for the peso sign, is there? No, because it's the same symbol. I think that "the cifrão always has a double stroke whereas the dollar sign only has it in certain typefaces" isn't enough to make it a whole new symbol. SergioGeorgini 12:52, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Jpmo22 21:38, 22 August 2007 (UTC) I really don't know how to discuss here, but I want to say that Cifrão and Dollar Sign are different symbols (or signs). Brazilian Real use Cifrão ($$\mathrm{S}\!\!\!\Vert$$) and American Dollar use $ (the Dollar Sign). So I cant see a good reason to merge this articles.
 * But they're not different. The dollar sign has a double stroke in many typefaces and for decades, the double stroke variation was by far the standard in the United States as well. It's like saying there's a difference between the "a" of Times New Roman and the "a" of Futura and that both should get a separate article. SergioGeorgini 12:48, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
 * But they are. They're different unicode formats. — LlywelynII  20:34, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Whether they look like eachother and can be confused, is not relevant here. If the signs are created at different times for different purposes they should not be confused on WikiPedia. It would be much better to add a very small section about confusable sign: cifrão (some such) and insert a at the start of it. That way the confusion is not propagated.  Said:  Rursus   ☻   09:08, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
 * They weren't created at different times and they don't simply "look like one another". It's the same sign. Again, the dollar sign can either have one or two strokes, it doesn't become a Cifrao when that second one is added. SergioGeorgini (talk) 18:02, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Again, it's not the same sign. You may think the distinction is minute, but it's still a distinction. — LlywelynII  20:34, 24 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose: the article doesn't need to be merged, it is fine in present state. 67.99.103.78 (talk) 11:32, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Because...?SergioGeorgini (talk) 18:02, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
 * "It is fine in its present state." ;) — LlywelynII  20:34, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

This is precisely what's wrong with Wikipedia. It clearly is the same symbol, with a shared history. They don't coincidentally look exactly the same, they are exactly the same with only a different word used. The dollar symbol in the US is exactly the same with the same history. Yet Llywelyn spams every opinion with "no it's not" without any reasoning, and that makes the issue settled?Promontoriumispromontorium (talk) 11:33, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

US
Is there any point in the theory that the dollar sign was formulated from a U and an S? It's little more than theory which is completely false. Moustan 86.10.97.187 (talk) 19:02, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Agree: should be erased or moved from the "origin theories" part.Tuqui (talk) 05:32, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

You're argument that it should be removed from origin theories is because it's an origin theory? Does that make any sense to you? Stating "which is completely false" is just an opinion. Hence why there are multiple origin theories listed in the first place. Promontoriumispromontorium (talk) 11:35, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

abbreviation of pesos
The dollar sign is most likely an abbreviation of "PesoS", not "PeSo", as the article indicates. In Spanish, words are commonly abbreviated by using the first and the last letter(s). There is a definite study on the subject by Alvaro Moreno: El signo de pesos, cuál es su origen y qué representa?, published in Mexico City in 1965, which shows many sources for some forms of the dollar sign being used to denote the Mexican peso in the British colonies in North America. One or two strokes are used indiscriminantly. -Ralf

August 2011 edit
Back in August 2007, Asterion (since retired) introduced the reference to Arthur Nussbaum's A History of the Dollar to support the Pillars of Hercules theory, but offered no page citation. I have now looked at that book and found that Nussbaum actually believed the "Ps." theory, which as my past edits should show, is much, much better documented. On August 18, 2010, an editor using the IP address 203.87.178.24, reverted my previous edits alleging that the Pillars theory is the "most widely accepted" theory, but offered no new evidence. Most on-line sources that propose this theory as the more plausible one simply reflect the text offered here in the Wikipedia article since its beginning and are, therefore, not much more than echo of this article. I have left the latest text on this theory here under "alternative theories." Best, TriniMuñoz (talk) 06:38, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Sestertius
The abbreviation for "sestertius" was never HS. It was IIS. A sestertius consisted of 2,5 asses, two full and one half ass. "Half" is "semi" in Latin. Thus "sestertius" : "the half-third one" or "the third one is half" or abbreviated: IIS.2.201.2.60 (talk) 23:04, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

What about this thingie?
http://img387.imageshack.us/img387/5554/zzab7ny.jpg -- I don't know much about this, but when I've seen it recently I thought - Hmm, that looks like the dollar sign... (That's a photo of US House of Representatives chamber, United States Capitol.)


 * It is a fasces backed by what I assume is a laurel leaf garland. Since the House Chamber started to be used only around 1807, the dollar sign predated this decorative choice.TriniMuñoz (talk) 04:06, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Correct me if I'm wrong, but that means the symbol for the currency of United States of America is based on the fascist symbol (the same symbol which gave the name to what we now know and define as fascism)?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.86.74.166 (talk) 23:30, 7 May 2009 (UTC)
 * If this was true, then fascism is alive and well in Cincinatti.Eregli bob (talk) 01:56, 18 September 2010 (UTC)
 * No it does not. You'll be glad to know that the association of the fasces with "fascism" only dates to the 1920s. The later term was coined in Italy and later applied to similar authoritarian movements of the early 20th century. Prior to that the fasces was a symbol of republicanism, but Mussolini ruined that for everyone. Besides, the fasces is not the inspiration for "$." TriniMuñoz (talk) 03:49, 12 June 2009 (UTC)
 * A minor point: the fasces were in continuous common use in the western world thousands of years prior to Mussolini and therefore escaped much of the stigma that the swastika suffered. Perhaps this effect is why the swastika doesn't bear much stigma in eastern Asia.  Frotz (talk) 12:08, 12 June 2009 (UTC)


 * And why would it bear a stigma if it even does at all? The events that happened which caused the stigma had nothing to do with Asia (not just east btw). - M0rphzone (talk) 05:43, 9 May 2012 (UTC)


 * There are numerous instances of swastika flags being flown in the Middle-East, especially in the form of a red background with a white circle with the swastika inscribed. From the context that they are flown, it's clear that the notoriety of Nazism is being invoked.  -- Frotz(talk) 05:01, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Relevance of the cinnabar symbol
This was not original research, but is an entry in a dictionary of occult symbols. The connection is that cinnabar is used in some spells having to do with money, particularly in Feng Shui. -- Frotz(talk) 05:20, 6 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi User:Frotz! Do you have the text from this source? Because before your edit the text of the section stated (my emphasis): "A symbol virtually identical to dollar sign has been used as an alchemic sigil for cinnabar dating at least as far back as the early eighteenth century, although this has not been proposed as an origin of the dollar sign."  I don't have access to the text, but I find it odd it would say it "has not been proposed as an origin of the dollar sign" and now you say the "connection is that cinnabar is used in some spells having to do with money."  This still sounds like original research.  It sounds like you are making a connection from money spells → cinnabar symbol → dollar sign that is unsupported in the text cited or the literature.  A Google Book Search of "cinnabar symbol" and "dollar sign" brings no pertinent hits. TuckerResearch (talk) 02:48, 7 December 2013 (UTC)


 * My thinking is like this: 1) Cinnabar is known to be used to represent wealth and money in magical contexts.  2) Sigils are tools used to symbolically represent thoughts, concepts, objects, and so on in magical contexts.  3) Years before the dollar sign publicly emerged, an identical symbol is listed as a a sigil for cinnabar in a book entitled "Lexicon Pharmaceutico-Chymicum" written by J.C.S. Sommerhoff in 1701.  I can add that book to the citation for the "Dictionary of Sigils"  Both can be found through Google Books.  -- Frotz(talk) 06:59, 7 December 2013 (UTC)


 * You're not getting it. That's original research, which Wikipedia frowns upon.  It isn't the book making the connection between the cinnabar symbol and the dollar sign, it's you, and that's a no-no.  ("'A and B, therefore C' is acceptable only if a reliable source has published the same argument in relation to the topic of the article.")  If you can find a book that makes that connection, cite that.  But you can't just put your reasoned opinions into Wikipedia. TuckerResearch (talk) 18:18, 7 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Okay, I see. I'll comb through Sommerhoff book to see if I can find something useful.  -- Frotz(talk) 22:27, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Reference 17
Hey guys, I'm concerned about reference 17 which is used throughout the article. The ref is an almost exact copy of a Wikipedia article, and while all the facts look right, as per WP:CIRCULAR it's bad practice to cite content that is originally from Wikipedia. Guys, we don't want citogenisis. I can start, but a bunch of this article is sourced from this ref, and I don't have time to find all the sources. It's not high priority (it's not like we don't have any citations) but we definitely need better sources down the line.

GeekX (talk) 19:55, 23 April 2015 (UTC)


 * It's not a good idea to refer to references by their number. While it looks like footnote #17 is, five months later, still the one you're talking about, you can never count on that. A ref inserted or deleted anywhere in the page before it will change its number. --Thnidu (talk) 04:35, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

good page    $
lock it cause it good Wikipedia13editor (talk) 22:22, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

redirect
This page was a redirect to Talk:Dollar, and there didn't seem to be a reason. So, I removed the redirect, and duplicated the text. I hope that was the right thing to do. Ingrid 03:20, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

A Strange Article.. For the first time I find this article,about one of the most famous symbols in the world very strange.After all 1796 is not really so very far away and the American Colonies were centres of huge trades involving cotton and tobacco... Surely it would not take a serious investigator little effort to find the real origins of this symbol...yet there is no real certainty presented only one idea ..which itself goes against Wiki rules.. In fact it suggests that someone somewhere actually wants to obscurethe real origins of the sign for perhaps ..emotional reasons..? Anyway here are some ideas The real question is..What was the basic official currency of the British American Colonies..I dont mean unoficial..there were many unofficial currencies circulating indeed buying things might be quite complicated ..I want to buy your two chickens but only have Spanish coins and you only have dutch Guilders etc But whatever money people used in real life what was the OFFICIAL money used of buying land etc? And the answer I suggest would be the British pound and British shilling. Whatever symbol was used by America its interesting that it follows naturally the British by putting the symbol in front of the amount and NOT BEHIND the amount.Secondly ,I suggest that most transactions were in SHILLINGS. now the normal way of writing the British Shilling sign was to write what was called a LONG S that looked like the letter F and put a line through it in other words writing something that looked very similar to a Dollar sign (certainy far more similar than the absurd peso/Dollar mixture. I would therefore suggest as articles have previously strongly suggested that as all British trading practices were taken over and maintained by the new American Republic that the dollar sign really is merely a continuation of the British shilling sign with the name shilling changed to Dollar .As someone has mentioned here the word Dollar was not unknown to the British and the term dollar for five shillings and half a dollar for two shillings and sixpence where quite common in my youth and had been around for several centuries There is nothing unusual therefore in the American nation switching from British shillings to American Dollars and https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Dollar_sign&action=edit&section=5#keeping essentially the same sign / — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.63.197.78 (talk) 14:59, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Other appearances of the symbol
No one seems to have mentioned anywhere the fact that the double-stroked $ appeared in a stylized fashion on the front of the old-style $10.00 bill. The numerals were arrayed atop of "S" scrollwork to make the double-stroked $. I think that's quite a stretch...if anything, the thick double verticals of the zeroes make it look more like a *triple* stroked $. I think it's really just scrollwork, unless you have any sources attesting to the contrary. Djublonskopf (talk) 16:24, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Number of strokes
Whatsup with one and two strokes thru S? So the $ symbol in for non-US dollar and double stroked S is for US dollar? Can someone explain? -pedro

As far as the dollar sign goes, it is merely a stylistic choice or popular fashion that decides what symbol one may write. With computers, most but not all fonts will produce a single-stroked sign. I did find a few fonts that do give a double-stroked symbol for the same key (Shift+4). 207.189.230.42 (talk) 04:51, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

There are better explanations based in medieval Iberian manuscripts about the origin of the dollar sign. I will look into this and get back here. But everything here is folk-etymology. Evertype 18:05, 2005 Mar 15 (UTC)

There are images about from a source that i think may be entitled 'Key of Solomon the King (Clavicula Salomonis)', that features a symbol very similar to the dollar sign($), this book is from the middle ages, this could be a link it http://www.luckymojo.com/kingsolomonwisdom.html, i either saw this symbol here or some other book, but i rememebr it being called different. Not mentioned in article but should be if confirmed.Book M 10:18, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Jpmo22 19:19, 27 August 2007 (UTC) Pedro, the Dollar Sign ($) and Cifrão $$(\mathrm{S}\!\!\!\Vert )$$ are differents simbols, US Dollar uses Dollar Sign and Brazilian currency use Cifrão. Please don't get confused about that, many people think they are the same but they are not.
 * But you're wrong, the dollar sign is sometimes written with two strokes, although less now than it used to be. The article itself alludes to this in several of the explanations for how the sign came about 71.243.28.62 (talk) 22:12, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Jpmo22 is wrong. If you are talking about US or Canadian dollars, the single-stroke dollar sign ($) and the double-stroke dollar-sign $$(\mathrm{S}\!\!\!\Vert )$$ mean the same thing and are used interchangeably. Just look at the page - you can see in the photo of the plaque about the first typeset dollar sign that the plaque uses the two-stroke version. I think the two-stroke version was much more common when I was a kid. But now the single-stroke version is on every computer keyboard, and it is easier to design a single-stroke version to use in a computer font. I suspect that that is the reason that the one-stroke version is common now. If you search with Google for images of "dollar sign", there are many with two strokes, especially among older images. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.254.176.10 (talk) 08:01, 11 March 2009 (UTC)


 * The above is wrong. The original US dollar sign was a narrow U and a wide S with the same center. These were carved by hand from wood and the bottom bar of the U kept breaking off. The symbol was changed to the double bar dollar sign for consistency. Other nations that adopted the sign sometimes used the double bar and sometimes used the single bar (as is proper). Typewriters and line printers (early computer printers) made for the US market had a double bar and for all other markets had a single bar. For dot-matrix printers and low-resolution raster displays, there was not enough space in the fixed width fonts for a clear second bar, so all early desktop computers and raster CRT monitors used the single bar. Better equipment was available by 1985, but did not become widely used for several more years. After a decade of only seeing single bar dollar signs, people designing typeface families assumed (incorrectly) that the US dollar sign had been changed to a single bar. The official US dollar sign is the double bar. The Canadian dollar sign is a single bar.Drbits (talk) 22:35, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Where can we read the official statement about the official US dollar sign, and where can we read the official statement about the official Canadian dollar sign? I have seen nothing like that anywhere, so I'd like to know how you know for the sake of certainty for me. Nicknicknickandnick (talk) 04:39, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
 * That is Ayn Rand's theory, but it seems just imagination, not based on any documentary evidence. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 00:31, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

cleanup
the article seemed to contain a fair amount of original research, and it didn't distinguish accepted origin theories from kookery. The image even combined the most likely origin (PS) with a clear "urban legend" aitiology (US). dab (&#5839;) 09:38, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
 * The theories are now sorted into serious and fancy.--Jorge Stolfi (talk) 00:34, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

origin of the symbol
The theory that has always attracted me is that the symbol is merely a cancelled "S" for "solidus", just as the pound is a cancelled "L" for "libra", the penny is a cancelled "c" for "centum", etc. Cancellation of the initial letter as a means of abbreviation has been around since the days of the scriptoria. If anyone could find a cancelled S predating the Pillars of Hercules, we could at least put that bit of folk-etymology to rest. 201.160.132.141 17:50, 4 June 2007 (UTC)(Robert Biddle, unregistered user)


 * The article is biased in a revisionist sense, as it calls the dollar sign its first lines as taken from "Mexicans". There is an interesting history to the use of the sign but nowhere is there any definite proof.  The 1930 online reference is solely one person's opinion and nearly 200 years after the fact making it a reference that is improperly weighted as it sets the direction of the dollar sign as Mexican.  Obviously the Mexican reference should be completely removed and Spain should be used only as the control and thus symbols were from Spain's treasury and Mexico has nothing geographically relating to the symbol.  Rather the pillars of Hercules were mandated by the King of Spain himself and Mexico was just a forced labor mining operation of the crown at the time.  If Mexican were to be interpreted with ethnic pride of the Mestizo sort, this is also wrong as the gabachos, or whatever word applies to the Spanish whites set policy with absolutely no regard to their colonies.


 * In summary, the reference biases in favor of only one theory and has a strong ethnic connotation that is misleading and incorrect. 100 year older references could as well be quoted, for example for the "U" imposed over the "S" theory.  I personally believe (since this likely was a convergent evolution of the symbol) that it was readily adopted by the US for just that reason and do credit the Spanish coinage with making it look like a monetary symbol ... we all can have our theories but the article violates Wikipedia guidelines by presenting one contending theory as essentially fact.
 * Not sure I got your point... but the "$" symbol was first used in The (future) US, by English-speaking merchants, for the "Spanish dollar", aka "real de ocho". When the US created its own currency, it borrowed the name and value from the Spanish dollar. No "revisionism" there, it is accepted history As for the origin of the sign, Americans seem to favor a US origin, a supposed evolution from "Ps" in the late 1700s.  However, that theory seems to be strained, to say the least, by nationalistic sentiment... Jorge Stolfi (talk) 01:05, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

Why does the $ precede the number
Has anybody any information on why the sign precedes the number? It doesn't make really sense from a syntactical point of view. When seen as a dimensional symbol it should be right behind the number (like "twenty volts" is 20V), however for some reason it precedes it. Polemon (talk) 19:14, 14 September 2009 (UTC)


 * In the original American colonies the British/Americans simply wrote money the same way they wrote the British pound...with the pound sign always in front of the amount.After independence the Americans kept to their British tradition — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.99.38.208 (talk) 22:02, 13 July 2012 (UTC)


 * A plausible reason (which would have made sense well before the dollar sign was invented) is to prevent forgery in checks and the like. Without the prefix "$", one could add digits to the left of the number --- e.g. turning a "7$" into a "97$".  The printing of dollar values as  rather than  was one of the most important fetures of COBOL, the first widely used programming language. Jorge Stolfi (talk) 01:15, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

Gibberish
In § Operating systems, the indented part under bullet point "In Unix-like systems..." begins
 * The using history expansion  (same as   and  ) means the last argument of the previous command in bash

What is supposed to mean? It's certainly not English. --Thnidu (talk) 04:39, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The using history expansion
 * It seems that you introduced that piece of text (11:13, 29 July 2010 UTC), so I'm asking you to please help clear it up. --Thnidu (talk) 04:45, 29 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I don't think this use deserved a separate menstion. It is just another instance of "$name" or "$number" being used to insert a variable (field, etc) in what would otherwise be interpreted as a string or number.Jorge Stolfi (talk) 01:24, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

Pillars of Hercules
The dollar sign originates from the use of the representation of the Pillars of Hercules on the Spanish pieces of eight. This pre-dates any other usage by at least 40 or 50 years, and perhaps by 300 years. Before editing this article again please take a look at the images used to confirm this hypothesis. Any other explanation is just urban myth. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.61.41.212 (talk) 21:40, 26 April 2017 (UTC)

The theory of overlaying 'P' and 'S' directly mentions the pieces of eight as the major currency of the New World – isn't it much more pausible and straightforward to use the symbol actually on the coins, rather than dream up some other explanation that is largely unsupported (and unsupportable). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.61.41.212 (talk) 21:48, 26 April 2017 (UTC)


 * That the Pillars of Hercules were on the Spanish pieces of eight does not establish that the symbol started as a drawing of the Pillars, in absence of any evidence anyone anywhere used such a drawing to mean the coin. That is dreaming up an unsupported explanation, the sort of "plausible" and "straighforward" just-so-story that also leads to all sorts of incorrect urban myths, folk etymologies, and similar nonsense.  On the other hand, actual manuscript account books, that physically exist and can be examined, and which historians have examined, clearly show a slow, gradual evolution, where the clear handwritten "Ps" in the earliest gradually shifts proportions and starts overlapping, ending in a handwritten "$".  Making the "Ps"-to-"$" theory not merely supportable, but actually supported by actual evidence of actual practice. Ehrbar (talk) 00:44, 15 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Is there any easy place where one can see that alleged "gradual evolution"? The only image I found -- from a book on Spanish scribal abbreviations -- has eight symbols for the Spanish dollar, of which seven are clearly recognizable as "Ps" and one is an "S" with two diagonal strokes.  There was no intermediate form that would support the thesis of gradual evolution. That theory also fails to explain how a symbol invented by English merchants in the US in the late 1700s, in private correspondence, quickly spread to the whole Spanish-speaking world. It also ignores the fact that the two-stroke sign (like the last scribal exampole above) was in use in Portugal and Brazil as a curency sign at least a hundred years earlier. So here is another interpretation: those "historians" mentioned above are just one guy who carefully picked samples of  "Ps" and "$" in a chronological order that seemed to support his theory, which was adopted in the English-speaking world for nationalistic reasons... Would someone provide actual evidence against *this* theory?Jorge Stolfi (talk) 01:49, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

Time to delete the Pillars of Hercules 'origin'?
The section giving the origin as the Pillars of Hercules motif is uncited and has been uncited for a long time. I believe it to be an urban myth. There is an unexplained leap of faith from the pillars motif (that definitely did appear on Spanish coins) to the US symbol (that did not appear on US coins). Is there any convincing reason why it should be kept? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:09, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
 * A month has passed with no defence of this unsubstantiated theory, so I will now delete it. Of course it can and should be reinstated if a reliable source can be found to support it. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:35, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
 * I have added a reference to a transcript of a receipt of 1775 from Portugal that uses the double-stroked "$" as a currency sign (specifically as a thousands separator in money amounts). I have found other examples in transcribed Jesuit chronicles written in Brazil in the late 1600s, and the practice was probably much older still. That seems to debunk the theory of a North American origin, and make the Pilars one more likely by default. I only need to find a fac-simile image (rather than a transcript) of similar documents Moreover, other Wikipedia and internet sources seem to say that the most common coins in circulation in the (future) US at the time were Spanish dollars from the Potosí mine, which carried the pillars emblem AND the Potosi mint mark. Thus that symbol was present in "US" coins at the time.Jorge Stolfi (talk) 01:49, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

Appearance on an old French map?
Browsing the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection I came across this old French map puplished in 1625 that features the sign drawn on a lot of mountains, mostly the ones around cities/towns. I looked at some of the authors other region scale maps but didn't see it on any others, though I could have just missed it cus I only looked at like 10. What's up with this? Way to much 'noise' comes up when searching Google like sites to buy historical maps, gis related stuff, ect. Maybe the maps text says what it is but I cant find a translation and there's no symbol key. Technocolor (talk) 09:22, 20 January 2019 (UTC)


 * Does not seem to be related. If I had to guess, I would guess that the "$"s indicate vineyards. Jorge Stolfi (talk) 01:59, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps a fancy "D"
Has it escaped everyone's notice all these years that the dollar sign "$" is just a fancy "D" (with a simple flourish on top or with the cent sign (¢) on top) with a vertical line through?

Americans so opposed the British way of doing things that they drove their carriages from the left-hand side and on the right-handside of the road and also ran their horse races on a counter-clockwise track instead of the British clockwise track.

I don't see it so far-fetched that Americans would prefer a line running through their monetary symbol vertically instead of horizontally, as the British do, and to top the standard unit (D) with the least significant unit (c) to remind people that the least in our land comes first (that is, not the federal goverment).

This instead of the visual gymnastics one must achieve to see the Pillars of Hercules or the Mexican peso. (DFurlani (talk) 12:35, 4 April 2019 (UTC))
 * Unfortunately there seem to be no example of documents that used a symbols clearly recognizable as "D with stroke". And the merchants who first used the symbol did not seem to see it as a political statement. Jorge Stolfi (talk) 02:16, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

Proposed reversion of bold edit that changed cifrao.svg to mathematical markup
Unfortunately, I'm afraid that the replacement of the cifrao image with a double overstruck S will have to be reverted, per MOS:ACCESS. The .SVG has (or at least should have) an alt= tag that tells screen-readers what it is. The mathematical markup is most likely impenetrable to them (unless anyone knows otherwise). Comments? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:54, 12 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I replaced the original image because it did not scale to match the reader-selected font size. The math version still has size problems, but at least scales. As for being "impenetrable", I cannot say.  I am used to math markup from editing science articles, so it seems rather vanilla to me. (The SVG file too would be impenetrable to casual readers, no?) All the best,Jorge Stolfi (talk) 02:07, 13 August 2021 (UTC)
 * PS. I do not see "math x image" addressed in that MOS page. The (new) text already describes the two symbols verbally, so the "alt" would be superfluous.Jorge Stolfi (talk) 02:23, 13 August 2021 (UTC)


 * I meant 'impenetrable to screen readers'. Your scaling point is a good one though, there are far more people with sight impairment who can read large text than the number who need screen readers.
 * On balance, I agree and the change should stand unless anyone else has a better idea. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 08:24, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

Position of $ in French-speaking Canada
Added 'citation needed' (sorry I wasn't logged in, it's been a while) and though I don't have time to dig it up myself, this Canada government site hints that this usage is correct, but it's in the context of using the CA currency symbol, not talking about general use of $. Hope someone can find something better. Good luck!

"...In a French document, when you need to specify the type of dollar (Canadian, American, Australian, etc.), the Translation Bureau recommends using the symbol $ CA to represent the Canadian dollar...The dollar sign is placed to the right of the dollar figure. Use a non-breaking space after the dollar figure, and between the dollar sign and the country code: 25,99 $ CA ..."

https://www.noslangues-ourlanguages.gc.ca/en/writing-tips-plus/canadian-dollar-symbol

Mark Asread (talk) 23:17, 29 December 2021 (UTC)