From: Simon Butcher (pickle@alien.net.au)
Date: Mon Oct 27 2003 - 07:46:11 CST
Hi!
<snip>
> However, the presence of two opposing conventions serves as a strong
> hint that there was no consensus in 1966, nor now, as to how glyph
> variants of the dollar sign were to be used to stand for
> different types
> of dollars.
I went to school in the 1980's, and both in Victoria and Tasmania I was taught to write it using the double-bar form. My brother in law is a school teacher here in Victoria and says he's been told to teach kids to write it using the double-bar form in Victoria and New South Wales, and strongly discourage the single-bar form. He doesn't know about other states.
> Kevin later quoted the Decimal Currency Board:
>
> > (c) where it is necessary to distinguish the Australian dollar from
> > overseas currencies, the letter A should be placed immediately after
> > the dollar sign - $A;"
>
> Interesting. I've often seen the opposite, A$ or AU$, even
> in contexts
> that only involved Australian dollars, not U.S. dollars.
>
> Of course you can always just use AUD and USD and be done with it.
My bank (ANZ) recently gave me literature related to obtaining foreign currency, and used the form $A (that is, with the double-bar form of the dollar sign, not the single-bar form). Considering the small glossy leaflet was about the rising Australian dollar, it's evidently a recent publication. Their website, however, obviously has no choice but to use the single-bar form due to font authors, who appear to be quite consistently using the single-bar form. Curiously, though, my bank statements from ANZ use this single-barred dollar sign ;)
Considering recent publications, the site pasted (thanks to Kevin Brown), the wide knowledge of the (original) double-bar form of the dollar sign, and the fact that it's still taught at schools in Victoria, Tasmania, and New South Wales (possibly other states too, I'm unsure) - does this amount to reasonable evidence of an existing subset of users?
The use of the single-bar dollar sign on the website Kevin provided (http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats/abs@.nsf/0/c7103f5100c7663fca2569de00293f3c) is obviously because there's no reliable method of displaying the double-bar form! I smell a subset of users which would benefit from disunification right there ;)
- Simon
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