Klarinet Archive - Posting 000482.txt from 2003/11

From: Eric Jacobs <erichenryjacobs@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] dollar sign
Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 16:53:16 -0500

this newsgroup is usually pretty accurate:
www.alt-usage-english.org

This is an excerpt from that website:

It is sometimes said that the dollar sign's origin is
a narrow
"U" superimposed over a wide "S", "U.S." being short
for "United
States." This is wrong, and the correct explanation
also tells why
the $ sign is used both for dollars and for pesos in
various
countries. The explanation is not widely known, maybe
because not
many people would think to look for it in a book
called A History
of Mathematical Notations, Volume II: Notations Mainly
in Higher
Mathematics by Florian Cajori (published in 1929 and
reprinted in
1952, by Open Court Press). Cajori acknowledges the
"U.S." theory
and a number of others, but, after examining many
18th-century
manuscripts, finds that there is simply no evidence to
support those
theories.

Spanish pesos were also called piastres, Spanish
dollars, and
pieces of eight. (The piece of eight was so called
because its
value was eight reales. Some countries made one-real
coins by
slicing pieces of eight into eight sectors; the
still-current U.S.
slang "two bits" for a quarter of a dollar may refer
to this,
although "bit" denoting any small coin -- as in
"threepenny bit" --
was already in use.) The coins were circulated in
many parts of the
world, much as U.S. dollars are today. The coins were
so well known
that, when the U.S. got around to issuing its own
silver coinage
(U.S. dollar coins first appeared in 1794), it simply
replicated the
Spanish unit's weight and hence value, and even one of
its names; so
it was natural to use the same symbol.

Since three of the four names given above for the
Spanish dollar
start with p (and pluralize with s), it was natural
for
abbreviations like p and ps to be used. Sometimes ps
was written
s
as P -- P with a superscript s. The superscript was
a common way
of rendering abbreviated endings of words -- we see
vestiges of it
today in the way some people write "10th". Now, what
happens if you
write P with a superscript s *fast*, because it's part
of a long
document that you have to hand-write because you can't
wait for the
typewriter to be invented, let alone the
word-processor? Naturally,
you join the letters. Well, now look at the top part
of the
resulting symbol. There's the $ sign! Reduce the P
to a single
stroke and you have the form of the $ with a double
vertical; omit
it altogether and you get the single vertical.

And yes, both these forms are original. Cajori
reproduces 14
$ signs from a diary written in 1776; 11 of them have
the single
stroke, which was the more common form to the end of
the century,
and 3 have the double stroke.

Although the $ sign originally referred to a
Spanish coin, it was
the revolting British -> American colonists who made
the transition
from ps to the new sign. (This is apparently also why
we write $1
instead of 1$; it mimics the British use of the pound
sign.) So,
while it did not originally refer to the U.S. dollar,
the symbol
does legitimately claim its origins in that country.

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