Mystery "e"

[Hyakmooks]

On most cosmetics bottles, there’s a little “e” next to the weight or volume. Is this some kind of logo for Euro weight standards or something? It’s been driving me bananas for years, since there’s no easy way to google “e”.

[Q.E.D]

More than you ever wanted to know about the “e symbol”:

3.8 What does the “e” symbol found on many packaged goods mean?

Prepackaged supermarket goods bought in Europe show, next to the
weight or volume indication, a symbol that looks like a slightly large
and bold lowercase letter “e”. With this symbol, the manufacturer
guarantees that the tolerance of the indicated weight or volume meets
the requirements of European Union legislation, namely:

Council Directive 75/106/EEC on the approximation of the laws of the
Member States relating to the making-up by volume of certain
prepackaged liquids, 1974-12-19, (Official Journal L 324, 1975-12-16).
http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/en/consleg/pdf/1975/en_1975L0106_do_001.pdf

Council Directive 76/211/EEC on the approximation of the laws of the
Member States relating to the making-up by weight or by volume
of certain prepackaged products, 1976-01-20, (Official Journal L 046,
1976-02-21, p. 1)
http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/en/consleg/pdf/1976/en_1976L0211_do_001.pdf

These EU regulations define the maximally allowed negative error of
the packaged content in relation to the label, as well as statistical
tests that manufactured packages must be able to pass.

The exact shape of the “e” is defined, along with various other far
less frequently used symbols, in:

Council Directive 71/316/EEC on the approximation of the laws of the
Member States relating to common provisions for both measuring
instruments and methods of metrological control, 1971-07-26,
(Official Journal L 202, 1971-09-06, p. 1).
http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/en/consleg/pdf/1971/en_1971L0316_do_001.pdf

The Unicode and ISO 10646 character-set standards call this “e” symbol
the ESTIMATED SIGN and encode it at position U+212E.

From here.