This got me interested in a spinoff, and of course a TM, zut, was there before me. So, for anyone like minded,
Yeah. The terminology could get a bit ambiguous, as three-quarters portrait is commonly also used to denote length (head & shoulders portrait, three-quarters portrait, full length portrait.) So, if you want to be more precise, you say “profile/three-quarters/full face view” for the angle at which you are viewing your subject.
Maybe it’s short for “ten characters.” If you count the blank space between the two words and the period, then ten chars. is 10 characters.
Wow.
ETA: The ten character minimum must be a guest thing. I posted the above and it went right through.
Last I checked, this board only required 2 characters in a post.
nm
No, Lord Feldon is correct.
Coins weren’t issued for Edward VIII, but the pattern coins show him facing left as well.
George VI faced left, the same direction George V faced, on the basis that Edward VIII should have faced right.
Edward apparently thought that his hair parting looked better, thus he wanted to face left as well, according to the wiki article on Edward VIII.
As a counterexample, I submith the following:
http://www.australian-threepence.com/images/australia-2005-2-dollar.jpg
3/4 face and an interesting vertical angle too.
Linky no worky.
If you just hit “enter” on the address in the URL bar, it’ll show up. Some places don’t allow direct linking, so you just have to enter it yourself.
Charles the Eleventh - wow! I had no idea. 
OK OK Charlie 2
If you wanted to put an identifiable image into a tiny space, you would want to include as much “information” as possible. Because a full-front portrait is bilaterally symmetric, you would be wasting half your space by including redundant information.
Same in Canada. But check out the rack!
Is it the left-facing presidents who were evil and the right-facing ones good? Or is it the other way around?
That sounds like a pretty ad hoc explanation. For the record, go look at coin portraits of gorgons in the ancient world – NONE of them have snakes in place of hair. A full-face portrait that was worn away would be simply “person”, not “gorgon”.
It’s not clear to me why a full-face portrait of a king would be unacceptable. even when worn, it’s obviously the king. And even if it got unacceptably worn down, you’d think that people years later in a different country wouldn’t be aware of this – it’s not like they passed around standard books on Coin Design – and just did the same thing over again.
I will observe that profiles are probably more distinct from individual to individual. even when pristine and unworn, I suspect that a person could pick out a profile image of a particular individual more easily than a full-face portrait.
If only it were so easy to tell!
Isn’t it because you can use the profile to guess the age of the coin, even if the centre is worn? (Because of the raised edges of coins, the centre gets worn more. The same applies to notes, which get more wear across the centre and the parts nearest it).
And that can - or could have, at least, in the past - told you whether the coin was still legal tender or not. “A king” is not always enough,
I have a memory of this counting when the 5p coin was introduced in the UK; for a while, old half-shillings were accepted as equivalent to 5p, but only to a certain vintage. Much easier to look for a profile than check which monarch ruled when.
Notes have raised edges?
If there’s a president who is universally thought of as evil, why put him on a coin?