I recently organized a list of currency symbols from various countries and found that many people are unclear about how to use these symbols, especially when doing forex trading or international transfers, which often leads to mistakes.

Currency symbols are actually a shorthand way to quickly identify different countries' currencies. For example, seeing € means euros, £ is British pounds, ¥ could be either Chinese yuan or Japanese yen (these two are particularly easy to confuse), and $ is used by over 30 countries worldwide. The main purpose of these symbols is to simplify writing; instead of writing "40 US dollars," it's much more convenient to write "$40."

Speaking of the euro symbol, it appears very frequently in the forex market, with the EUR/USD currency pair being traded almost daily. The euro symbol represents the entire Eurozone currency, involving multiple countries, making it especially important in international trade.

I’ve compiled a table including symbols and codes for the US dollar, Japanese yen, Chinese yuan, British pound, euro, and various currencies from Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. If you often need to input these symbols, on Mac, the euro symbol is Shift+Option+2; on Windows, it’s Alt+E. Both systems use Shift+4 for the dollar. Shortcut keys for yen and pound are also available, so you can memorize them directly.

There's also a common pitfall: the ￥ symbol can represent both the Chinese yuan and the Japanese yen, so it’s best to specify the currency code when writing, such as CNY￥100 for 100 yuan, or JPY￥100 for 100 yen. The $ symbol is more complicated because many countries use it, including the US dollar, Canadian dollar, Australian dollar, and Hong Kong dollar, so they are usually written as US$, C$, A$, HK$ to distinguish them.

In the forex market, what’s traded are actually currency pairs, which are exchange rates between two currencies. USD/GBP is the rate of US dollars against British pounds. The first currency, USD, is called the base currency, and the second, GBP, is the quote currency. Once you understand this logic, reading exchange rate tables won’t be confusing.