U0024

U+0024, known as the DOLLAR SIGN, is a Unicode character that represents the dollar currency symbol. It is most commonly associated with the United States dollar, but it is also used for other currencies that adopt the dollar name, as well as in various programming and typographic contexts.

Encoding and representation: U+0024 is located in the Basic Latin block. Its code point is 36 in decimal. In UTF-8 it is encoded as a single byte, 0x24. The general category is Currency Symbol (Sc). In HTML, the symbol can be expressed with the named entity $. In many programming languages and text processing systems, the character is represented simply as the literal symbol $.

Usage and semantics: The glyph denotes money, prices, or monetary values in text. In computing, the dollar sign appears in many languages and environments as a variable prefix or delimiter (for example, shell scripting) and as a symbol within strings and templates. Its appearance varies by font, but it is typically a stylized S with one or two vertical strokes crossing it.

History and context: The origin of the dollar sign is not definitively documented. It is widely believed to derive from a stylized combination of symbols associated with the Spanish peso (or the abbreviation “PS”) and evolved through usage in early American commerce. Since the 18th and 19th centuries, the sign has become a global representation of dollar-denominated currencies and remains a standard glyph in digital and print typography.