Currency symbols · U+24

$Dollar symbol

The dollar sign, shared by dozens of currencies beyond the US.

Looking for the colour emoji instead? 💲 Heavy Dollar Sign — same idea, drawn as a picture by each platform.

How to type it
Unicode
U+24
Alt code
Alt+36
HTML
$
Unicode name
Dollar Sign
$
Your font
01 — Origin

Where the Dollar symbol comes from

The dollar sign predates the dollar. It came from the Spanish peso, written as an abbreviated pS in eighteenth-century American commercial records; the S drifted over the p until only a stroke remained. The United States adopted the existing merchants’ mark rather than inventing one.

Currency in a dozen countries, and far beyond money: shell variables, regular expressions, spreadsheet absolute references and jQuery all borrowed it because it was one of the few punctuation marks on early keyboards nobody had claimed.

Worth knowing
One stroke or two is a font choice, not a different currency — $ and $ are the same character. The genuinely different one is the cifrão ₡ ₱ and friends, which are separate signs.
02 — Codes

Dollar symbol codes

Copy whichever form your tool expects. The character behind them does not change.

03 — How to type

How to type $ on any keyboard

Pick the route that matches the program in front of you.

Windows
Hold Alt and type 36 on the numeric keypad, then release. Without a keypad, use the Character Map app (search “charmap”).
Mac
Press Control + Command + Space to open the character viewer, then search “dollar”. Double-click to insert.
Phone
There is no shortcut on a phone keyboard. Tap the symbol at the top of this page, then long-press in any text field and choose Paste.
Web and code
In HTML write $ or $. In CSS content: "\0024". Make sure the page is served as UTF-8 and the raw character works too.
04 — Font support

Will $ actually show up?

We checked 147 fonts installed on a normal machine and counted how many of them contain this character. A symbol missing from a font is drawn as an empty box — the text is still correct, it just cannot be drawn.

97% 143 of 147 fonts

Safe everywhere. This one is in almost every font ever installed, including the defaults on Windows, Mac and Android.

05 — Similar

Symbols people confuse with $

These look alike but are different characters — different codes, different fonts, sometimes different meaning.

¢ Cent SignU+A2 · has its own page £ Pound SignU+A3 · has its own page ¥ Yen SignU+A5 · has its own page
06 — Related

Other currency symbols

Symbols from the same family, each with its own page: where it came from, how to type it and how well fonts support it.

07 — Same block

Currency symbols

Every currency sign, from the euro to the rupee and the bitcoin.

All currency symbols →
08 — FAQ

Dollar symbol — questions

How do I type the Dollar symbol?
On Windows hold Alt and type 36 on the numeric keypad. On Mac open the character viewer with Control + Command + Space and search “Dollar”. Or just tap the symbol on this page — it goes straight to your clipboard.
What is the HTML code for $?
Write it as $ or $ in HTML, \0024 in CSS content, and \u0024 in JavaScript. All four produce the same character.
Is $ an emoji?
No. $ is a text character — it takes the colour of the text around it and works in usernames, filenames and documents. An emoji is replaced by a colour picture and is sometimes stripped by forms and systems.
Why does $ show as a box on some devices?
Because that font has no drawing for this character. We checked 147 fonts on a normal machine and 143 of them include it. The character itself is always correct; only the drawing is missing.