Pound sign
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The pound sign ("₤" or later more commonly in the UK "£") is the symbol for the pound sterling, the currency of the United Kingdom (UK), and for some other currencies of the same name in other countries. Rarely, L is used instead. Both symbols derive from librum, the basic Roman unit of weight (about 0.329 kg), in turn derived from the Latin word for scales or balance. The pound became a British Imperial unit of weight, and the pound currency unit was so named because it was originally the value of 1 troy pound of sterling silver. Incidentally, the pre-decimalisation penny (of which 240 made £1) took the symbol d from the Latin word denarius, the Roman 'penny'.
The ISO 4217 currency code is GBP (from the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code for the UK and the initial letter of pound). Occasionally the abbreviation UKP is also seen.
The pound sign, like the dollar sign ("$"), is usually placed before the number (i.e. "£12,000" and not "12,000£"), and is usually not separated from the following number, or is separated only by a thin space.
The symbol "₤" is also known as the lira sign. In Italy, prior to the adoption of the euro, the symbol was used as an alternative to the more usual L to indicate prices in lira (but always with double horizontal lines).
The symbol "£" has Unicode code point U+00A3 (inherited from Latin-1)[1]. In HTML it can be entered as £ or £
The symbol "₤" has Unicode code point U+20A4. In HTML it can be entered as ₤
The symbol "£" has a value 156 in Extended ASCII.
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