I only just recently figured out what currency symbols are all about. When I used to look at forex charts, I was really confused. Actually, these symbols are used to quickly identify different countries’ currencies. Compared with writing out the full currency name, using symbols is definitely more convenient. For example, $, €, and £ make it instantly clear which country’s money it is.

When it comes to the euro symbol, it shows up especially often in forex trading because EUR/USD is one of the most active currency pairs in the world. The euro symbol is that € shape—it looks like a C with two horizontal lines. I used to mix up the euro symbol and the U.S. dollar symbol, but later I learned that $ is used in more than thirty countries, so sometimes you need to add a prefix to tell them apart, like US$, NT$, and HK$.

What’s most interesting is that some symbols mean completely different things in different fields. For instance, the symbol ฿ represents the Thai baht in the forex market, but in cryptocurrency it stands for Bitcoin. And the ￥ symbol: in China it represents renminbi, while in Japan it represents the Japanese yen, so you need to add the currency code to make it clear—writing it as CNY￥ or JPY￥ is the only way to be sure.

If we’re talking about the most practical part, it’s the keyboard shortcuts for typing these symbols. On a Mac, the euro symbol is Shift+Option+2, the pound is Option+3, and the U.S. dollar is Shift+4. For Windows users, to enter the euro symbol press Alt+E, and for the pound press Alt+L. These shortcuts really save a lot of time, especially when doing forex trading or international investing.

Now that I can quickly tell which market is involved just by seeing a country’s currency symbols, the whole trading approach feels much clearer. Do you have any currency symbols you use especially often?