Currency Symbols (€ $ £ ¥): Copy Them and Know Where They Go

Like any other symbol, currency symbols are invariable: no plural, no abbreviating full stop. You write 1 € and 100 €, never «100 €s» or «100 €.» — the same rule that rules out «100 kms».

They are worth distinguishing from the three-letter ISO codes — EUR, USD, MXN, COP — which belong in financial contexts, exchange tables and any document where several currencies might appear together. In ordinary prose the symbol or the full word reads better.

The reason is historical. Nearly every currency in the region descends from the colonial peso and inherited its sign — the very $ the United States later adopted. Only the Costa Rican colón ₡ and the Paraguayan guaraní ₲ developed a distinct character that reached Unicode.

That creates a genuine ambiguity: «$500» may mean five hundred US dollars, five hundred Mexican pesos or five hundred Argentine pesos — wildly different amounts. Any document crossing borders should add a country marker such as US$ or MX$, or use the ISO code outright.

There is an irony buried in all this. The most widely accepted account of the $ sign traces it to the Spanish piece of eight, the peso that served as an international currency for centuries: some versions derive it from the «Ps» abbreviation, others from the Spanish coat of arms with the Pillars of Hercules and their wrapped ribbon. Either way, the symbol the world now reads as American was born in the Hispanic world.

The euro, by contrast, has documented authorship: the European Commission chose the design in 1996, basing it on the Greek letter epsilon as a nod to the cradle of European civilisation and adding the two parallel lines to signal the currency's stability.