You’ve probably stared at the £ sign a thousand times without really thinking about it. It’s just there. It's fancy, it's British, and it sits in front of the number. But honestly, if you look closely, it's just a very dramatic letter L with a stick through its middle.
There is a reason for that. And it’s not because "London" starts with L.
Actually, the story of symbols for british currency is a weird mix of Roman tax collectors, medieval scribes who were bored of being confused by their own handwriting, and a massive national identity crisis that happened in 1971.
The Mystery of the Ornate L
The £ symbol is a shorthand for libra, the Latin word for scales or a pound in weight. Back in the day—we’re talking Anglo-Saxon times—a pound wasn’t just a concept. It was a literal pound of sterling silver.
If you had 240 silver pennies, they weighed exactly one pound.
People started using "L" to abbreviate it. But scribes in the 1600s had a problem. Their "L" looked like the number 1. It looked like other letters. To make it stand out as "this is money, don't spend it all at once," they started crossing it with a horizontal bar. Sometimes two bars.
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The Bank of England, founded in 1694, basically looked at this messy handwritten squiggle and said, "Yeah, that works." They standardized it.
Why the Bar Matters
Interestingly, the single crossbar we use today wasn't always the rule. For a long time, you’d see two bars (like the Euro € or the Yen ¥). It wasn’t until the late 20th century that the Bank of England started stripping it back to one bar on banknotes to keep things clean. Specifically, the Isaac Newton £1 note in 1978 was a big moment for the single-bar look.
From D to P: The Penny’s Identity Crisis
If you find an old British coin from the 1960s, you won’t see a "p" on it. You’ll see a "d."
Wait, what?
Before 1971, Britain used a system called £sd. No, not the drug. It stood for Librae, Solidi, Denarii.
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- £ was the Pound.
- s was the Shilling (from the Roman solidus).
- d was the Penny (from the Roman denarius).
People didn't say "five denarii," though. They said "fivepence." But they wrote it as 5d. It’s kinda like how Americans use "lb" for pounds of weight today—it’s a ghost of Latin that just refused to leave the building.
When "Decimal Day" hit on February 15, 1971, the government threw the "d" in the bin. They replaced it with "p" for "new pence." For about a decade, people actually called them "new pee" to distinguish them from the old coins. Eventually, we all just got lazy and dropped the "new."
The Guinea: The Symbol That Isn't a Symbol
There is one more "ghost" in the world of symbols for british currency that still confuses people at auctions: the Guinea.
A Guinea was worth 21 shillings (or £1.05 in today’s money). There is no specific curly symbol for it like the pound sign. Usually, you’ll just see "gn" or "gns."
Even though the coin hasn't been minted since the early 1800s, you’ll still hear it mentioned at high-end horse races or art auctions. Why? Because it sounds posh. If you pay in Guineas, the seller gets the pounds, and the auctioneer keeps the extra 5p as a commission. It’s a centuries-old tip hidden in a dead currency unit.
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How to Get the Formatting Right (2026 Edition)
If you're writing about money in the UK, there are some "unspoken" rules that actually matter if you want to look like you know what you're doing.
- The symbol goes first. It’s £50, never 50£. Writing the symbol after the number is a fast way to get corrected by a Brit.
- No spaces. Keep that £ tight against the digit.
- The p disappears. If you have pounds and pence, you only use the pound sign. You write £10.50. You do NOT write £10.50p. That’s a cardinal sin of British grammar.
- The decimal point. We use a period/full stop, not a comma. So, £1.99, not £1,99.
Typing it Out
If you’re on a US keyboard and feeling lost, you can’t just look for the symbol—it’s usually not there.
On a Mac, it’s Option + 3.
On Windows, you have to do the "secret handshake": hold Alt and type 0163 on the number pad.
Actionable Insights for Using British Symbols
If you are managing a website or a business that deals with the UK, start by auditing your pricing displays. Remove the "p" from any price that already has a "£" sign. Ensure your "£" is the correct Unicode character (U+00A3) and not a stylized capital E, which happens more often than you'd think in budget font packages. If you are dealing with historical records, remember that "10/-" means ten shillings and zero pence—the slash and dash were the "decimal point" of the Victorian era.