RE: Shape of the US Dollar Sign

From: Ayers, Mike (Mike_Ayers@bmc.com)
Date: Tue Oct 02 2001 - 11:25:46 EDT


> From: G. Adam Stanislav [mailto:adam@whizkidtech.net]
> Sent: Monday, October 01, 2001 12:07 PM

> Send him a check instead. Every single US check I have ever seen had
> a dollar sign printed to the left of the field where the
> numeric amount
> is to be entered. They all use the same glyph regardless of the rest
> of the design of the check.

        Not necessarily. I don't recall looking, but any commonality here
is bound to be coincidence.

> That glyph is the S with a single vertical bar. That does not make it
> the official legal glyph (I doubt we have one), though.

        There is no "official" dollar sign, unless it's a really well kept
secret. In fact the dollar sign rarely appears in governmental publications
(it probably shows up a bit these days, but previously has been very rare).

> I grew up in Slovakia, and we were taught to draw the US dollar sign
> with two vertical bars. I recall my surprise when I came to the US
> and saw the single-bad dollar sign. I asked my American born friend
> about it, and he insisted that in America the dollar sign is always
> drawn with a single vertical bar.

        He was either putting you on or misinformed. One bar, two bars - as
we say in America, "it's all good".

> Heh, then the computer revolution started, and suddenly I started
> noticing dollar signs that looked like S with just a tiny scratch
> above and below but not all the way across. Go figure. :)

        That has nothing to do with the computer revolution. The "S with
vertical bars above and below" has been around a while. let me digress a
bit...

        As I understand it, the original dollar sign did have two bars. The
single bar version came into play because it was easier to make movable type
with the single bar glyph, the double bar glyph requiring very hard metals
and the appropriate tools, and therefore requiring more expensive type.

        Likewise, even the single bar was a bit too much for cheap rubber
type, so the bar was removed from inside the "S" curves of the single bar
glyph to accomodate that (otherwise the ink would run into the blank
semicircles and you would just have a blob). If you go to a minimart that
still uses a price gun, you may have the treat of seeing this glyph, along
with its sister, the "c with vertical bars above and below".

/|/|ike



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