Pound sign

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This article is about ₤, which stands for the pound sterling. For #, which stands for the mass unit(only in America), see Number sign.

The pound sign ("₤" or later more commonly in the UK "£") is the symbol for pound sterling, the currency of the United Kingdom (UK), and some other currencies of the same name in other countries. Rarely, L is used instead. Both symbols derive from libra, being the basic Roman unit of weight (about 0.329 kg) - with 'pound' also being a British Imperial unit of weight measurement - in turn derived from the Latin word for scales or balance. The ISO 4217 currency code is GBP (from the ISO 3166-1 country code for the UK and the initial letter of pound). Occasionally the abbreviations UKP or GBP are also seen.

In Italy, prior to the adoption of the Euro as its currency, the symbol was used as an alternative to the same but always with a double central line ("₤"), or the more usual letter L to represent prices in Lira. When writing the pound, most people do not write it with a double central line.

The pound sign, like the dollar sign ("$"), is usually placed before the number (i.e. "£12,000" and not "12,000£"), and is usually not separated from the following number or only separated by a thin space.

Its Unicode code point is U+00A3 (inherited from Latin-1). [link]

Pound sign

See also