The Philippine peso sign (₱) is the currency sign used for the Philippine peso, the official currency of the Philippines. The symbol resembles a Latin letter P with a double stroke. It differs from the peso sign used throughout the rest of Latin America which is "$".
The peso sign was introduced by Executive Order No. 66 of the United States colonial government circa 1900. The sign, in capitalized Roman font with two parallel lines “passing through and extending slightly beyond loop at right angle to shaft or stem", was decreed to be used "by all officials as the designation of the new Philippine peso to differentiate it from the $ mark for United States currency and the pesos of Spain...” This sign was chosen by Charles E. Magoon, acting chief of the Bureau of Insular Affairs, and approved by Governor William H. Taft.[1] One of the first reports marking Philippine pesos as ₱, US dollars as $, and Mexican pesos as $, is found here:[2]
Encoding
The peso is usually denoted by the symbol "₱". This symbol was added to the Unicode standard in version 3.2 and is assigned U+20B1 (₱). The symbol can be accessed through some word processors by typing in "20b1" and then pressing the Alt and X buttons simultaneously, or by pressing and holding "alt", then pressing "8369" on the keypad.[3] Other ways of writing the Philippine Peso sign are "PHP", "PhP", "P", or "P" (strike-through or double-strike-through uppercase P), which is still the most common method, although font support for the Unicode Peso sign has been around for some time.[4]
Category
