Dollar sign

The dollar sign ($; also known as the peso sign) is a currency symbol consisting of a capital ⟨S⟩ crossed with one or two vertical strokes ($ or depending on typeface), used to represent the base unit of account of various currencies around the world, including most currencies denominated "dollar" or "peso". The explicitly double-barred sign is called cifrão in the Portuguese language. The sign is also used in several compound currency symbols, such as the Brazilian real (R$) and the United States dollar (US$): in local use, the nationality prefix is usually omitted. In countries that have other currency symbols, the US dollar is often assumed and the "US" prefix omitted. The one- and two-stroke versions are often considered mere stylistic (typeface) variants, although in some places and epochs one of them may have been specifically assigned, by law or custom, to a specific currency. The Unicode computer encoding standard defines a single code for both. In most English-speaking countries that use that symbol, it is placed to the left of the amount specified, e.g. "$1", read as "one dollar".