Talk:Pound sign

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what is the deal with pound signs having double crosses or not?

anyone know why we use single cross these days..somthing to do with keyboards?

I don't think it's significant, just a stylistic difference like using a different font. For what it's worth I hand-write pound signs with two cross-bars (I'm 24 if we think date might have something to do with it). PeteVerdon 10:17, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

The text uses the double cross for both examples although it is describing the diffence between two versions. This needs to be corrected.

Contents

[edit] L as an alternative?

The article states that the letter L is used rarly as an alternative. I have never seen this. It may have been in the past, but I doubt many people today would recognise this use.81.178.254.17 22:14, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I have never seen this used and I live in England! The original author might of got mixed up with Lb often used for "Pound weight". I am removing it with this discussion as a reason. If anyone has any more evidence of it being used then cool put it back on with the evidence. htmlland.net 15:50, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Actually I have seen the L used for pound. It's been a while now, but back in the day when computers had issues displaying extended ASCII, the pound symbol was sometimes substituted with an L--so L36 meant £36. --Rdiggle 11:12, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
Just an L it isn't very common. However, in my experience, it isn't uncommon to see L (an 'L' with a strike through) (when it is hand written). The pound sign is just an L with a strike through, the curl a the top and the loop at the bottom are merely a common decoration. AskOxford has quite a good explanation of the origin (http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutsymbols/poundsign?view=uk). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.163.165.185 (talk) 12:30, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Extended ASCII

"The symbol "£" has a value 156 in Extended ASCII."

Please specify which variant of "extended ASCII" this refers to (Latin-1 or whatever). (Stefan2 21:50, 17 April 2007 (UTC))

I believe it was 156 in the original IBM codepage used in DOS. The value is 163 in modern codepages. --Rdiggle 11:12, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Incorrect Display

this page displays incorrectly in IE7. - the right box floats over text. can someone fix it?

I'm sorry, but only the Microsoft team can deal with problems arising from IE7's fucked up standards 'support'. 81.108.97.33 01:42, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Troy pound? Tower pound!

The article states that the original basis of the pound Sterling is one Troy pound of silver. This seems very unlikely in terms of historical sequence (the English pound is mentioned centuries before any the Troy pound was established as a standard) and geographical origin. According to Adam Smith in 'The Wealth of Nations' the English penny was 1/240 of the "pound Tower weight". The pound Tower weight was 326 grams as contrasted with the Troy pound of 373 grams, so there is a discrepancy of over 14%. I have altered the article accordingly.

Agemegos 23:58, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sterling silver

According to the article on sterling silver, sterling silver is first known in the 13th century. But the English pound as a unit of currency is attested from Saxon times. It therefore seems unlikely that sterling can be the original standard of fineness for the pound. Smith says (in 'The Wealth of Nations' that the original standard was one pound (Tower weight) of fine silver. I have altered the article accordingly.

Agemegos 00:06, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Before or After the Amount (Number)

I think the text should say that today the sign is usually written before the amount. I get the impression from old books and articles I have seen that in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it was more common to write the sign after the amount. Shulgi 20:54, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge with £ (currency)

Aren't they the same thing? $ redirects to dollar sign. And as far as I can tell, £ and £ (disambiguation) both redirects to £ (currency). So there isn't any other £. (by the way, to make things worse, Talk:£ (disambiguation) redirects like main space to Talk:£ (currency), but Talk:£ redirects to Talk:Pound sign!). --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 17:48, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Makes sense to me --Rumping 11:47, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Why not say how to type it?

Hmm?--82.152.216.199 (talk) 22:51, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

WP:NOT#HOWTO. EdC (talk) 23:34, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
I think one line hardly makes it a "how-to style manual of instructions". --82.152.216.199 (talk) 00:04, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
And here are some other articles SpySheriff#Removal, Inverted question mark and exclamation point, List of HD Enhanced PS2 games, Umlaut (diacritic)#Computer_usage. Next you'll be saying Carbon offset is a HOWTO for governments. Also, this page says how to enter the character in HTML- how is that any different?? --82.152.216.199 (talk) 00:13, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Yes; it describes its entity reference forms, which are standardised and factual. Also, I tried your supposed entry method and it didn't work. EdC (talk) 23:54, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
It's not my method. Anyway, as you can see from the other articles, it is the done thing to post how to type some characters, so please stop removing information, thanks.--82.152.216.199 (talk) 13:04, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
BTW did you actually type the 0? If you do alt and 163 it won't work. it has to be alt + 0163--82.152.216.199 (talk) 13:06, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
Yes; nothing happened. Perhaps you should mention what operating system you're using. EdC (talk) 01:03, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Pound kg comparison

I removed "on Earth's surface" from the metric equivalence. The kilogram is a unit of mass, not force, so the comparison is valid anywhere. Rojomoke (talk) 13:28, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The currency sign in Turkey

I have never seen the Lira sign used as currency in Turkey, maybe it's because I'm 24 years old, but still, it means that we haven't been using it at least so far. We used to use TL (Turkish Lira, Türk Lirası) now we are using YTL (New Turkish Lira, Yeni Türk Lirası) as we have changed the scale of the currency. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.225.73.246 (talk) 07:59, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

  • I wondered about this too, but wasn't sure enough to remove it. If you're Turkish and you've never seen it in 24 years then the current wording, which implies it's in regular use, certainly needs changing. With your local knowledge would you be able to find out whether the symbol was ever used in Turkey, and, if so, roughly when it went out of use? For now I have just tagged this claim (and the similar one for Syria) as needing a source to back it up. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.150.101.159 (talk) 00:35, 25 May 2008 (UTC)