I just realized recently that the symbols you usually see when reading forex quotes actually represent currencies from different countries, and it’s really easy to mix them up. For example, if you see the euro symbol € you’ll immediately know it involves euro-related currency pairs, such as the common pairing EUR/USD.

In fact, the biggest role of currency symbols is to simplify writing. Writing $40 is definitely faster than writing 40 US dollars, and it’s also much easier to recognize at a glance. I put together some commonly used ones: the US dollar uses $, the British pound uses £, the Japanese yen uses ¥, the Chinese yuan uses ￥, the Korean won uses ₩, the Indian rupee uses ₹, the Thai baht uses ฿, and the euro symbol is €.

The easiest ones to confuse are the ¥ and $ symbols. ¥ represents the Japanese yen in Japan, and it represents the Chinese yuan in China, so if you need to distinguish them you can write CNY￥ or JPY￥. As for the $ symbol, it’s used by more than 30 countries—not just the US. Canada, Australia, Singapore, and Hong Kong all use it too. You need to look carefully at the letters in front, like US$, C$, A$, and HK$.

Another interesting one is the ฿ symbol: in forex, it represents the Thai baht, but in the cryptocurrency world it stands for Bitcoin. They’re completely different concepts.

If you want to type the euro symbol € quickly on a keyboard, on Mac you can use Shift+option+2, and on Windows you can use Alt+E. The US dollar symbol $ is typed with Shift+4 on both sides; for the British pound £, on Mac use Option+3 and on Windows use Alt+L.

What forex currency pairs mean is the exchange rate between two currencies. For example, EUR/USD is the exchange rate of euros against US dollars. The first one is called the base currency, and the second is called the quote currency. Traders aim to pursue profit by buying and selling different currency pairs—this is the basic logic of forex trading.