Euro sign

The euro sign ( € ) is the currency symbol for the euro. It was presented to the public on 12 December 1996 and launched in 1997 by the European Commission of the EC countries as a symbol of a common European currency. The euro sign is, except in constellations, behind the number.

It is on a 1974 set up as a study design of the former chief graphic designer of the European Community ( EC), Arthur Eisenmenger, are based. The European Commission replies that it was developed by a four-member, unnamed team. The euro sign is a big but round E, which in the middle of two horizontal lines has ( or even like a C with an equal sign (=) combined). It is reminiscent of the Greek letter epsilon ( ε ) and thus to the ancient origins of Europe. The two straight lines ( parallels ) symbolize the stability of the euro.

The constructed, static origin graphic was of the type designers soon as a new currency symbol accepted (comparable to the sign of dollar $, Naira ₦, Pound £, Won ₩ or Yen ¥ ), which earned him the rank of writing specific character that formally the letter forms of itself must subordinate font family.

Representation in computer systems and replacement

Coding

The Euro currency symbol is represented by the hexadecimal code U 20 AC in Unicode system. Also exist in the older 8-bit family of standards ISO 8859 with ISO 8859-15 ( ISO Latin-9 ) and ISO 8859-16 ( ISO-Latin -10), since 2003, ISO 8859-7 ( Greek), three character encodings representing the euro symbol among the hexadecimal code 0xA4. Under Microsoft Windows often comes the proprietary character encoding Windows CP -1252 for use in which the euro symbol is represented by 0x80 (hexadecimal). In HTML it can by € be coded.

Keyboard

On the German standard PC keyboard, the euro sign is as third assignment on the E button.

  • On Windows it can with the help of Alt Gr E or Ctrl Alt E ( can be disabled in exceptional cases) and be entered on the English keyboard using Alt Gr 4.
  • Under Mac OS, the input via Alt E. occurs
  • On Unix or Unix-like systems, the input option of the respective shell or the program used depends, in the major Linux does the input usually with Alt Gr E or above the compose key with = = E or C.
  • It can also be entered by pressing Alt 0128 (numeric keypad).

Substitution

If the character can not be displayed because it is missing in the font or the character set used, so it should be replaced by the abbreviation EUR, or the word euro. The spellings Eur and EURO are not valid.

Today, however, virtually all modern computer systems and fonts based on Unicode, so a replacement for technical reasons it is necessary any more. Even if the keyboard you are using does not have the character, it can be practically always inserted through a corresponding function of the operating system or the respective text editor. Only when programs or fonts are used that have arisen prior to 1997 and have not been brought up to date, it may be a false representation.

ISO/IEC 8859-16 ISO/IEC 8859-7 Shell (computing)
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