# Why is there no cent symbol? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 9, 2003, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-no-cent-symbol/160145 "2003-03-09T21:18:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![MeanOldLady](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanoldlady/32/10737_2.png) [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2003, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-no-cent-symbol/160145/21 "2003-03-10T05:15:55Z")
Hmm, doesn’t work for me. Perhaps it’s b/c I’m on a laptop that doesn’t have the numeric keyboard on the side. Doesn’t work with the numbers up top either. Does this mean I’ll never be able to make the cents sign? ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Achernar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e274bd/32.png) [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2003, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-no-cent-symbol/160145/22 "2003-03-10T05:18:17Z")
Not at all. Just use ¢ for things like this message board, and things like word processors, open Character Map and copy it from there. ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2003, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-no-cent-symbol/160145/23 "2003-03-10T05:22:34Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Urban Ranger \* > \*\*¢ > > You can use ¢ in HTML \*\* I just want to say that this is the only cent symbol that displayed correctly on my PC (Win2k Japanese version) with default settings. ---
**Author:** ![Geek\_Mecha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecae2f/32.png) [@Geek\_Mecha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Geek_Mecha)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2003, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-no-cent-symbol/160145/24 "2003-03-10T05:24:41Z")
Key Caps is indeed available in Mac OS X. Macintosh HD \> Applications \> Utilities \> Key Caps ---
**Author:** ![Achernar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e274bd/32.png) [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2003, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-no-cent-symbol/160145/25 "2003-03-10T05:28:38Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by scr4 \* > I just want to say that this is the only cent symbol that displayed correctly on my PC (Win2k Japanese version) with default settings. Excellent. Then I feel justified in denouncing that horrible numerical key sequence. Everyone should use ¢! 😉 What browser are you using, just out of curiosity? ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2003, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-no-cent-symbol/160145/26 "2003-03-10T05:40:21Z")
ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is a seven-bit character encoding scheme. That means only seven bits are used to encode every character in the ASCII encoding scheme. That gives 128 code points, because seven bits can represent the numbers 0-127 inclusive. In ASCII, as ASCII was meant to be used on rather limited communications lines, the lower codepoints were used for control characters (like ACK, or Acknowledge), giving an even more limited set of characters for ASCII implementers to play with. Looking at a chart, only 32-126 are used for actual, typable characters (127 happens to be DEL, or the Delete character). So basically, they made compromises. Those compromises were based on the characters used to write American English (so no accented characters made it) and the programming languages of the day. The cent glyph simply didn’t make the cut. But ASCII wasn’t, and isn’t, the only character encoding. EBCDIC, or Extended Binary Coded Data Interchange Code, was developed by IBM to further dependence on its equipment, and EBCDIC (at least some versions of it) included the cent symbol. EBCDIC was downright ugly compared to ASCII, however, and it was never used outside of IBM mainframes, minicomputers, terminals, and the hardware that had to talk with those dinosaurs. (Why only seven bits when most computers use, and used, eight-bit bytes? The high-order bit was meant to be used for parity, to determine if the byte had been damaged by the network.) Anyway, most computers to use ASCII had eight-bit bytes. Once the need to check for parity had gone the way of the old, unreliable networks, the high-order bit was used to extend ASCII to include extra characters. This was great, but there was no standard to determine _which_ characters would be included, or where. Old IBM-PCs and compatibles used the upper characters (from 128-255, inclusive) for drawing characters (lines and shaded boxes and such) to make up for the crappy graphical capabilites of those little toys. Later, Microsoft would create a few codepages of ASCII extensions to encode Cyrillic and Western European and Turkish. That was fine _until_ you needed to write a Turkish name and a Russian name in the same document. Different computer companies made different extensions, creating a tower of babel reminscent of the pre-ASCII era. ANSI defined a standard ASCII extension, but it wasn’t used as widely as other ASCII extensions were. The One True ASCII Extension is called Unicode, a multi-byte character encoding scheme that aims to include _everything_, from Hangul to Chinese to Arabic to Cherokee to Elvish. As Unicode can use multiple bytes per character, it can standardize the placement of any number of glyphs while remaining backwards-compatible with ASCII. Big win indeed. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2003, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-no-cent-symbol/160145/27 "2003-03-10T06:01:03Z")
> [@](#): > > EBCDIC . . . was never used outside of IBM mainframes, While CDC used ASCII (at least in the late 1970s), Burroughs certainly used EBCDIC. I’m not sure, but I believe that a couple of others in the B.U.N.C.H. also used EBCDIC. ---
**Author:** ![Swirdle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4bbf92/32.png) [@Swirdle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Swirdle)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2003, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-no-cent-symbol/160145/28 "2003-03-10T07:34:31Z")
I would like a ‘tick’ on my keyboard. Not a tick as in like a flea, or a clock sound. A tick symbol. Like er, err, like a square root without the false start. It would be much more use than a lotta stuff available on the character map. ---
**Author:** ![PlasmaWhore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@PlasmaWhore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlasmaWhore)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2003, 8:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-no-cent-symbol/160145/29 "2003-03-10T08:39:45Z")
Was the $ originally used to represent a string? I remember having to use it all the time when programming on my commodore. ---
**Author:** ![MeanOldLady](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanoldlady/32/10737_2.png) [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2003, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-no-cent-symbol/160145/30 "2003-03-10T11:47:51Z")
¢ (previews) It worked! Yay! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Early\_Out](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Early\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Early_Out)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2003, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-no-cent-symbol/160145/31 "2003-03-10T13:32:22Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by viking \* > \*\*Early Out: the tilde and caret are much used in programming and unix, which were prevalent uses for computers when keyboards were being invented. \*\* Well, you might be onto something, but computers weren’t even a science fiction fantasy when keyboards were invented. The computer keyboard evolved directly from the typewriter keyboard, which predates computers, adn programming, by many decades. Now, the interesting side question is whether old typewriter keyboards had the cents sign on them! I seem to recall that they did, but I haven’t seen an old manual typewriter in years, so there’s no way to check. The reason I say that you might be onto something is that it’s possible that, when the typewriter keyboard was being adapted to computer use, the folks who were doing it made some selective character substitutions that more closely met their needs. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2003, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-no-cent-symbol/160145/32 "2003-03-10T13:55:04Z")
**Plasma** , the dollar sign is used in DOSes (and some other microcomputer OSes) to terminate a string constant. Is that what you mean? But as ASCII was developed in the 1960s, that wasn’t its `original’ use by any stretch. (Remember, the history of electronic computing extends thirty years before the first home computers hit the scene. :)) ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2003, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-no-cent-symbol/160145/33 "2003-03-10T15:56:35Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by English Cid \* > \*\*I would like a ‘tick’ on my keyboard. Not a tick as in like a flea, or a clock sound. > > A tick symbol. Like er, err, like a square root without the false start. It would be much more use than a lotta stuff available on the character map. \*\* A tick symbol, AKA in the States as a “check mark”, is available in certain fonts. Look throught the character set of the font Marlett on a Windows machine. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2003, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-no-cent-symbol/160145/34 "2003-03-10T17:27:27Z")
> [@](#): > > Now, the interesting side question is whether old typewriter keyboards had the cents sign on them! I have one ancient typewriter where the ¢ is above the **6** and a second, somewhat newer typewriter, where the ¢ is on a separate key to the right of the colon and semi-colon. @ is above the ¢ on the separate key and the quotation marks are elsewhere. ---
**Author:** ![Omphaloskeptic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bcef8e/32.png) [@Omphaloskeptic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omphaloskeptic)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2003, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-no-cent-symbol/160145/35 "2003-03-10T22:11:42Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by MeanOldLady \* > \*\*Hmm, doesn’t work for me. Perhaps it’s b/c I’m on a laptop that doesn’t have the numeric keyboard on the side. Doesn’t work with the numbers up top either. Does this mean I’ll never be able to make the cents sign? ☹ \*\* The PC ALT codes only work using the numeric keypad. But don’t lose hope yet! If your laptop simulates the numeric keypad using the Fn key or similar (often using 789/UIO/JKL on the regular keyboard–look for numbers on or near these keys), then you might be able to get the symbols using Fn+Alt+(numbers). You probably need to make sure NumLock is on, too. ---
**Author:** ![Early\_Out](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Early\_Out](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Early_Out)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2003, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-no-cent-symbol/160145/36 "2003-03-10T22:13:23Z")
Thanks, **tomndebb**. I thought I remembered the ¢ symbol being on old typewriter keyboards, but you know what they say about the memory, and how it’s the first thing… oh, wait… what is it they say? What thread is this? Who am I? ---
**Author:** ![King\_Friday](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/43a26b/32.png) [@King\_Friday](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/King_Friday)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2003, 9:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-no-cent-symbol/160145/37 "2003-03-11T09:23:16Z")
That’s one of my favorite riddles…“what key appears on a typewriter but not on a keyboard?” ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tropical\_Warlord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@The\_Tropical\_Warlord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tropical_Warlord)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2003, 11:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-no-cent-symbol/160145/38 "2003-03-11T11:28:51Z")
06 ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tropical\_Warlord](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@The\_Tropical\_Warlord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tropical_Warlord)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2003, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-no-cent-symbol/160145/39 "2003-03-11T11:31:28Z")
Ack, I’m sorry about that. I was just lurking and accidentally hit the ‘submit reply’ button at the bottom of the page. ---
**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:** [March 11, 2003, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-no-cent-symbol/160145/40 "2003-03-11T18:01:08Z")
**English Cid** > [@](#): > > I would like a ‘tick’ on my keyboard. Not a tick as in like a flea, or a clock sound. > > A tick symbol. Like er, err, like a square root without the false start. It would be much more use than a lotta stuff available on the character map. Testing:  (That’s Option - V which on a Mac makes a mark that does useful double-duty as a square-root sign or a check mark) Looks good on preview. Here goes… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-no-cent-symbol/160145.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-there-no-cent-symbol/160145.md?page=3)