U+00A3 · Currency symbol
HTML entity
£
LaTeX
\mathsterling
Pound Sign Symbol £
£ is pound sign, U+00A3. Unicode also records it as “pound sterling”. It was added in Unicode 1.1, and Unicode files it under Currency symbol.
Also known as
- pound sterling
- Irish punt
- lira
- etc.
What Unicode says about £
not to be confused with the unit of weight
glyph may have one or two crossbars, in distinction from 20A4
— annotation from the Unicode Standard, NamesList.txt
Codes & technical data
| Unicode | U+00A3 | |
|---|---|---|
| HTML hex | £ | |
| HTML decimal | £ | |
| CSS | \00A3 | |
| JavaScript | \u{00A3} | |
| Python | \U000000A3 | |
| Java / C# | \u00A3 | |
| Rust | \u{00a3} | |
| Swift | \u{00A3} | |
| PHP | \u{00A3} | |
| URL encoded | %C2%A3 | |
| UTF-8 bytes | C2 A3 | |
| UTF-16 bytes | 00A3 | |
| Base64 | wqM= | |
| Decimal | 163 | |
| HTML entity | £ | |
| LaTeX | \mathsterling | |
| Category | Currency symbol (Sc) | |
| Introduced | Unicode 1.1 | |
Will £ survive being pasted?
- Normalisation. Yes. £ is unchanged by NFKC, so it survives normalising systems intact.
- Legacy encodings. £ exists in Latin-1 and Windows-1252, so even software that predates Unicode can store it.
- Size. 2 bytes in UTF-8. Character-limited fields — SMS, bios, some form validators — usually count bytes, not characters.
Unicode cross-references
The standard points readers of £ at these characters — usually because they look alike, or because one is the correct choice where the other is often used by mistake.
Nearby in Latin-1 Supplement
The upper half of ISO 8859-1: the accented letters and the symbols that Western European printing needed but ASCII had no room for. This is where ° ± × ÷ £ ¥ © ® ½ ¼ live, which makes it the most-copied symbol block in Unicode despite being one of the oldest.
How to type £
| Windows | Type 00A3 then press Alt+X, or hold Alt and type 163 on the numeric keypad |
|---|---|
| macOS | Press Ctrl+Cmd+Space, then search for “pound sign” |
| Linux | Press Ctrl+Shift+U, type 00a3, press Enter |
| HTML | £ |
About Unicode’s Currency symbol category
Unicode classifies this as a currency symbol. Spreadsheets and number formatters recognise the category, which is why a cell formatted as currency can display it without being told it is text.
Frequently asked questions
- How do I type the £ pound sign symbol?
- On Windows, type 00A3 and press Alt+X. You can also hold Alt and type 163 on the numeric keypad. On Linux press Ctrl+Shift+U then 00a3. On any system the quickest route is the copy button on this page.
- What is the code for £?
- Pound Sign is U+00A3, written in HTML as £ and in LaTeX as \mathsterling. In UTF-8 it takes 2 bytes. The table above lists every escape format.
- What kind of character is £?
- Pound Sign is filed under Currency symbol in the Latin-1 Supplement block, and was introduced in Unicode 1.1. Unicode classifies this as a currency symbol. Spreadsheets and number formatters recognise the category, which is why a cell formatted as currency can display it without being told it is text.