EURO SIGN (U+20AC)

This character is part of the CJK Unified Ideographs Extension B unicode block.

Windows info: #128 (keystroke: AltGr-4 or Ctrl-Alt-4)
Macintosh info: #219 (keystroke: Shift-Option-2)

Arial Unicode MS family — character map	Bitstream Cyberbit family — character map
Palatino Linotype Italic family — character map	LinotypeZapfino One family — character map

The official graphic symbol used as the euro sign, the symbol for the currency of the European Union, was designed in 1974 by Arthur Eisenmenger, the Chief Graphician of the European Community. In December 1996, the European Commission publicly presented the proposed shape of the euro symbol, but its authorship was not revealed until early 1999. The European Union’s announcement reported that about thirty draft designs were drawn up internally, then two were picked by the “general public”, and finally, two EU officials — Jacques Santer and Yves-Thibault de Silguy — chose the final design. The new euro symbol was officially presented as “an epsilon harking back to the cradle of European civilisation and the first letter of Europe, crossed by two parallel lines to indicate the stability of the euro.” But according to Mr Eisenmenger, the symbol was drawn “without much consideration” for some temporary purpose, and was not at all intended as a currency symbol.

The announcement of the new character had substantial effects for the computer industry: most operating systems, software packages, fonts, as well as keyboards and other appliances had to be updated. On July 23, 1997, the European Commission issued a document “The use of the Euro symbol” (no. COM(97) 418), which defines strict rules on how to use the euro symbol. Type designers were generally not pleased with the presented design, because it has been created as a logotype, to appear in one set style only. Every other currency symbol (dollar, cent, pound, yen etc.) is a letterlike character. Its appearance is font-specific, to match the visual style of the typeface (weight, serifs etc.). Today, most type designers use the official logo-like symbol only as a non-binding suggestion, and design font-specific euro characters for their typefaces.

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This page shows the selected character in three of the world’s largest fonts: Arial Unicode MS; Bitstream Cyberbit; Palatino Linotype Italic; as well as your chosen font, LinotypeZapfino One. Although this section of the site works for all characters defined by the Unicode Consortium, most fonts contain only a small portion of Unicode’s many thousands of characters. You can use Character Details pages to see how a particular character varies its shape among several fonts, or simply to check if your chosen font contains a particular character.

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