Why the dollar sign comes in front of the amount?
In: Economics
I also think it’s helpful when you’re considering different currencies, because it points out from the beginning what type of currency you’re talking about
Why not?
So you know it’s currency before reading the number. Let’s you have a perspective immediately.
It also allows for you to use, or not use, decimal points for cents, without if being messy.
I always thought it’s a way to prevent tampering with the number by adding more numbers in front of it.
In the global economy, many companies deal with multiple currencies (certainly every company I’ve worked for in UK and Netherlands). Most countries have the currency sign at the beginning so for standardisation’s sake (in spreadsheets, accounting systems, reporting systems etc) we always put it at the beginning regardless of the norms of that country. Or use the 3-letter currency code.
It’s an accounting artifact from when accounting ledgers were done by hand with a pen. $104.35 some ledgers had 1 square for a number kind of like graphing paper. The $ in the square made it difficult to tamper with the number. Like this; https://www.smartresolution.com/printing/products/products-zoom.aspx?p=21180
Same with using red ink or <$124.74> or (126.24) for negative numbers instead of using the – sign
I always wonder this. In French Canada the dollar sign comes at the end. Sometimes it makes more sense to me to write it that way because we say $10 as ‘ten dollars’, not ‘dollars ten’.
Latest Answers