$

Dollar sign

Marks dollars and pesos across dozens of currencies — written before the amount with no space: $25. Ambiguous on its own in international copy, so prefix it (US$, CA$, MX$) where the currency matters. In code it names variables in shell and PHP, opens template expressions in JavaScript, and anchors end-of-line in regex. Fonts draw it with one or two vertical strokes; both are correct.

Biography

1770s

The leading theory: a Spanish-American abbreviation ps, for pesos, written over and over in eighteenth-century correspondence until the p's stem crossed the s. The sign is documented in 1770s manuscripts before the United States adopted its peso-descended dollar — so the symbol is likely older than the currency it now names.

Copy it anywhere

  • Symbol$
  • UnicodeU+0024
  • HTML entity$
  • CSS content\0024
  • JavaScript\u0024
  • URL encoded%24
  • Windows Alt codeAlt+36

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