The euro sign () is the
currency sign
A currency symbol or currency sign is a graphic symbol used to denote a currency unit. Usually it is defined by the monetary authority, like the national central bank for the currency concerned.
In formatting, the symbol can use various format ...
used for the
euro
The euro ( symbol: €; code: EUR) is the official currency of 19 out of the member states of the European Union (EU). This group of states is known as the eurozone or, officially, the euro area, and includes about 340 million citizens . ...
, the official currency of the
eurozone
The euro area, commonly called eurozone (EZ), is a currency union of 19 member states of the European Union (EU) that have adopted the euro (€) as their primary currency and sole legal tender, and have thus fully implemented EMU pol ...
and unilaterally adopted by
Kosovo
Kosovo ( sq, Kosova or ; sr-Cyrl, Косово ), officially the Republic of Kosovo ( sq, Republika e Kosovës, links=no; sr, Република Косово, Republika Kosovo, links=no), is a international recognition of Kosovo, partiall ...
and
Montenegro
)
, image_map = Europe-Montenegro.svg
, map_caption =
, image_map2 =
, capital = Podgorica
, coordinates =
, largest_city = capital
, official_languages = ...
. The design was presented to the public by the
European Commission
The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body ...
on 12 December 1996. It consists of a stylized letter
E (or
epsilon), crossed by two lines instead of one. In English, the sign immediately precedes the value (for instance, €10); in most other European languages, it follows the value, usually but not always with an intervening space (for instance, 10€, 10€).
Design
There were originally 32 proposed designs for a symbol for Europe's new common currency; the Commission
short-list
A short list or shortlist is a list of candidates for a job, prize, award, political position, etc., that has been reduced from a longer list of candidates (sometimes via intermediate lists known as "long lists"). The length of short lists varie ...
ed these to ten candidates. These ten were put to a public survey. After the survey had narrowed the original ten proposals down to two, it was up to the Commission to choose the final design. The other designs that were considered are not available for the public to view, nor is any information regarding the designers available for public query. The Commission considers the process of designing to have been internal and keeps these records secret. The eventual winner was a design created by a team of four experts whose identities have not been revealed. It is assumed that the
Belgian graphic designer Alain Billiet was the winner and thus the designer of the euro sign.
The official story of the design history of the euro sign is disputed by
Arthur Eisenmenger, a former chief graphic designer for the
European Economic Community, who says he had the idea 25 years before the Commission's decision.
The Commission specified a euro logo with exact proportions and colours (
PMS Yellow foreground, PMS Reflex Blue background
), for use in public-relations material related to the euro introduction. While the Commission intended the logo to be a prescribed
glyph shape, type designers made it clear that they intended instead to adapt the design to be consistent with the
typeface
A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font.
There are thousands o ...
s to which it was to be added.
Use on computers and mobile phones
Generating the euro sign using a computer depends on the
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...
and national conventions. Initially, some mobile phone companies issued an interim software update for their special
SMS
Short Message/Messaging Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile devices exchange short text ...
character set, replacing the less-frequent Japanese
yen sign with the euro sign. Subsequent mobile phones have both currency signs.
The euro is represented in the
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
character set with the character name EURO SIGN and the code position U+20AC (decimal 8364) as well as in updated versions of the traditional Latin character set encodings. In
HTML
The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaS ...
, the entity can also be used.
History of implementation
An implicit character encoding, along with the fact that the code position of the euro sign is different in historic encoding schemes (
code pages), led to many initial problems displaying the euro sign consistently in computer applications, depending on access method. While displaying the euro sign was no problem as long as only one system was used (provided an up-to-date
font
In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a " sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design.
In mo ...
with the proper
glyph was available), mixed setups often produced errors. Initially, Apple, Microsoft and Unix systems each chose a different code point to represent a euro symbol: thus a user of one system might have seen a euro symbol whereas another would see a different symbol or nothing at all. Another was
legacy software
In computing, a legacy system is an old method, technology, computer system, or application program, "of, relating to, or being a previous or outdated computer system", yet still in use. Often referencing a system as "legacy" means that it paved ...
which could only handle older encodings such as pre-euro
ISO 8859-1. In such situations character set conversions had to be made, often introducing conversion errors such as a
question mark
The question mark (also known as interrogation point, query, or eroteme in journalism) is a punctuation mark that indicates an interrogative clause or phrase in many languages.
History
In the fifth century, Syriac Bible manuscripts used ...
(?) being displayed instead of a euro sign. With widespread adoption of
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
and
UTF-8
UTF-8 is a variable-length character encoding used for electronic communication. Defined by the Unicode Standard, the name is derived from ''Unicode'' (or ''Universal Coded Character Set'') ''Transformation Format 8-bit''.
UTF-8 is capable of e ...
encoding these issues rarely arise in modern computing.
Entry methods
Depending on
keyboard layout and the
operating system
An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs.
Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...
, the symbol can be entered as:
* (UK/IRL)
* (US INTL/ESP/DNK/FIN/ISL/NOR/SWE)
* (BEL/ESP/FIN/FRA/GER/ITA/GRE/POR/CZE/EST/LTU/SVK/SWE/ROS/ROP/TUR)
* (HU/PL)
* (UK/IRL)
* (US INTL/ESP)
* in
Microsoft Word in United States and more layouts
* + in
Microsoft Windows
Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...
(depends on system locale setting)
* followed by in
ChromeOS, most
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...
distros, and in other operating systems using
IBus.
* followed by in the
Vim text editor
On the
macOS
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...
operating system, a variety of key combinations are used depending on the
keyboard layout, for example:
* in British layout
* in United States layout
* in Slovenian layout
* in French layout
* in German, Italian, Spanish and Turkish layout
* in Swedish layout
The
Compose key sequence for the euro sign is followed by .
Typewriters
Classical
typewriters are still used in many parts of the world, often recycled from businesses that have adopted desktop computers. Typewriters lacking the euro sign can imitate it by typing a capital "C", backspacing, and
overstriking it with the
equals sign
The equals sign (British English, Unicode) or equal sign (American English), also known as the equality sign, is the mathematical symbol , which is used to indicate equality in some well-defined sense. In an equation, it is placed between tw ...
.
Use
Placement of the sign varies. Countries have generally continued the style used for their former currencies. In those countries where previous convention was to place the currency sign before the figure, the euro sign is placed in the same position (e.g., €3.50). In those countries where the amount preceded the national currency sign, the euro sign is again placed in that relative position (e.g., 3,50 €).
The European Union’s ''
Interinstitutional Style Guide
A style guide or manual of style is a set of standards for the writing, formatting, and design of documents. It is often called a style sheet, although that term also has multiple other meanings. The standards can be applied either for gene ...
'' (for EU staff) states that the euro sign should be placed in front of the amount without any space in English, but after the amount in most other languages.
In English language newspapers and periodicals such as the ''
Financial Times
The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Nik ...
'', ''
The Economist
''The Economist'' is a British weekly newspaper printed in demitab format and published digitally. It focuses on current affairs, international business, politics, technology, and culture. Based in London, the newspaper is owned by The Eco ...
'' and many more, the euro signlike the
dollar sign ($) and the
pound sign (£)is placed before the figure, unspaced,
When written out, "euro" is placed after the value in lower case; the plural is used for two or more units, and euro cents are
separated with a point, not a comma (e.g., ''€1.50'', ''14 euros''). This convention is the reverse of that used in many other European languages.
Prices of items costing less than one euro (for example ten cents) are often written using a local abbreviation like "ct." (particularly in Spain and Lithuania), "snt." (Finland), c. (Ireland) and
Λ (the capital letter ''
lambda
Lambda (}, ''lám(b)da'') is the 11th letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the voiced alveolar lateral approximant . In the system of Greek numerals, lambda has a value of 30. Lambda is derived from the Phoenician Lamed . Lambda gave ri ...
'' for Λεπτό ''Leptó'' in Greece): (for example, 10 ct., 10c., 10Λ, 10 snt. The US style "
¢" or "¢" is rarely seen in formal contexts. Alternatively, they can be written as decimals e.g. 0.07 €.
See also
*
Notes
References
External links
Euro name and symbol Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs of the European Commission
July 1997, Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs of the European Commission
Several methods are shown for and others special characters.
{{Euro topics
Currency symbols
Euro
Symbols introduced in 1996
Symbols of the European Union