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If you've every had to write a web page, or for that matter, any document, which
mentions currency, you've probably wondered what to use to identify the
particular currency; the symbol, even if it's known, probably isn't available
as part of a standard font so how should currency be universally described ...
For the United Kingdom, should it be; Great British Pounds, UK Pounds, Sterling,
GBP or UKP ?For America, should it be; US Dollars, Dollars, USD or US$ ?
Luckily an ISO standard, ISO 4217:1995, defines all the codes which should be
used for the currencies; as shown below.
Note that the recently introduced euro presents an interesting problem;
in the official ISO 4217 standard it is defined as XEU and this code is
in standard use throughout Europe's financial institutions, however, the code
which is generally used, colloquially, and in the mainstream press is
EUR; although not part of the ISO standard, it is likely that this later
code will be adopted as the de facto standard or both will happily, or perhaps
not, depending upon your view, co-exist together.
* Note that EUR code for the euro is not part of the original
ISO standard; XEU is the correct code, however, the former is rapidly
becoming the de facto standard.
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