Currency symbol

Symbols are neither defined nor listed by international standard ISO 4217, which only assigns three-letter codes.

The modern dollar and peso symbols originated from the mark employed to denote the Spanish dollar,[2] whereas the pound and lira symbols evolved from the letter L (written until the seventeenth century in blackletter type as

For example, the European Commission was criticized for not considering how the euro sign would need to be customized to work in different fonts.

These two factors have led to most type foundries designing customized versions that match the 'look and feel' of the font to which it is to be added, often with reduced width.

The Unicode CJK Compatibility block contains several square versions of the names of currencies in Japanese katakana.