# I can't put in my two cents!

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-cant-put-in-my-two-cents/4354>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [October 29, 1999, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-cant-put-in-my-two-cents/4354 "1999-10-29T19:47:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\
**Post date:** [October 30, 1999, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-cant-put-in-my-two-cents/4354/21 "1999-10-30T16:34:00Z")

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The ‘no “dollar”’ comment was addressed, obviously, to the general public, since **sunbear** patently understands it.

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**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\
**Post date:** [October 30, 1999, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-cant-put-in-my-two-cents/4354/22 "1999-10-30T22:48:00Z")

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The problem is that different fonts assign different characters to the upper ascii values (128-255). 155 is a cents sign in the “terminal” font that’s the closest thing to a universal standard. But a lot of fonts assign something else to 155 or just don’t use it. So if I do an alt-155, _I_ see a cents sign, but I can’t know for sure that others will.  
As someone who used to spend lots of time reading ascii/ansi bulletin boards, I had presumed that the high-bit character set was standardized. Then Windoz decided to make Arial their default font.

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**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\
**Post date:** [November 1, 1999, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-cant-put-in-my-two-cents/4354/23 "1999-11-01T06:08:00Z")

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And why do PCs and Macs differ in their upper-ASCII usage? Mac fonts are pretty standard except for symbol, dingbat, or specialized fonts, but they don’t match to PC fonts. It isn’t a problem here or in decently good email programs (I type option-4 and get ¢ and email it to a PC user or post it like I just did 🙂 and the PC user sees the cent sign okay), but if I save it as a plain text file and copy it to a floppy and a PC user opens it, many of the upper-ASCII symbols are remapped. (Same with vice versa). Here is what a Mac user sees when opening a document with upper ASCII characters formatted on a PC:

infinity sign \_

ìcurly quotesî

em dashó

en dashñ

degrees \*

dot ï

european bracket quotes ´in hereª

ellipsis Ö

Was there no standard for upper ASCII when the respective platforms developed?

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