Pound sign (£)

How to read it

Unicode names the character POUND SIGN (U+00A3) and lists the currencies it is used for: the pound sterling, the Irish punt and the lira, among others. The US Government Publishing Office’s style manual glosses it as libra, pound, placed before figures, as in £10. The Bank of England traces it to the letter L, the initial of the Latin word libra, meaning a pound of money. The pound sterling’s ISO code is GBP.

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One bar or two

Both are the same sign. Unicode notes that the glyph may have one or two crossbars, and that the difference between single- and double-bar forms says nothing about which currency is meant. A separate lira sign ₤ (U+20A4) exists only for compatibility with the HP Roman-8 character set used by printers; Unicode gives £ for the lira as well, as in the former lira of Italy, and notes that until 2012 it was also used for the Turkish lira, which now has its own sign.

Pound sign or hash?

In the US, “pound sign” can also mean #, the hash sign. The American Heritage Dictionary gives both senses: £ for a unit of currency, especially the pound sterling, and # for a pound as a unit of weight. Unicode’s chart notes that £ is not to be confused with the unit of weight. The two signs have shared a slot before: the character-code standard ECMA-6 lets the number sign # or the pound sign £ take the same code position, 2/3.