RE: Handwritten EURO sign (off topic?)

From: Marco Cimarosti (marco.cimarosti@essetre.it)
Date: Thu Aug 14 2003 - 10:12:59 EDT

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    Anto'nio Martins-Tuva'lkin wrote:
    > On 2003.08.06, 11:12, Philippe Verdy <verdy_p@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
    >
    > > the placement of the currency unit symbol or multiple is language
    > > dependant, and the same local practices are used with the
    > euro, as the
    > > one used for pre-euro currencies.
    >
    > You mean that Dutch should write one euro as "1,- EUR", while Portuguese
    > as "1EUR00", and perhaps British as "EUR 1.00"?... It may be the case, but
    > I'd found that a bad idea and worth fighting against.

    Why? Different countries always used different characters as decimal or
    "grouping" separators for numbers.

    The Italian for "one and a half euros" is "uno virgola cinquanta euro"
    (where "virgola" means "comma"). Should we say "comma" and write a dot!?

    > After all the euro is a common currency and its figures should be
    > written in a common way.

    Why?

    > > In fact, the position of the currency unit and decimal separator or
    > > placement of the negative sign depends mostly of the current locale
    > > (language/region) and not on the indicated currency, so this
    > > convention is applied locally for *all* currency units.
    >
    > Nope, this is not true:

    In most cases, it is: amounts in foreign currency are normally formatted
    according to local conventions. E.g. a price in US$ on an Italian magazine
    would probably be formatted as "$2.345,50", not "$2,345.50" or "2,345$50¢".

    > > Using the cent sign is mostly US specific and the symbol is not
    > > recognized as such in most European countries, so the cent sign is
    > > bound directly to the dollar.
    >
    > [...] then I suppose there is a
    > theoreitical possiblity that it may be used as a symbol of euro cent
    > (though I personally prefer "cEUR").

    The problem is not *which* symbol to use for cent: it is the concept itself
    that cents may need a symbol which is not familiar in most EU countries.

    I guess that Ireland is the only euro-zone country where you can see a price
    expressed in cents, such as "55 cents". In most other countries of Europe,
    the same amount would be expressed as "0.55 euros".

    _ Marco

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