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Pound sign
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The pound sign (£ or ₤) is the symbol for the pound sterling—the currency of the United Kingdom (UK). The same symbol is (or was) used for similarly named currencies in some other countries and territories, such as the Irish pound, Gibraltar pound, Australian pound, and Italian lira. Several countries, including Lebanon and Egypt, call their currency "the pound" but do not use the £ symbol.

The symbol derives from a capital "L", representing libra, the basic unit of weight in the Roman Empire, which in turn is derived from the Latin name for scales or a balance. The pound became an English unit of weight and was so named because it originally had the value of one tower pound (~334 grams)^{[citation needed]} of fine (pure) silver.

The pound sign is placed before the number (e.g. "£12,000"), and separated from the following digits by no space or only a thin space.

The symbol ‹₤› was called the lira sign in Italy, before the adoption of the euro. It was used as an alternative to the more usual L to show prices in lire.

In the original old Caslon metal fonts, the pound sign was identical to the italic capital "J" rotated 180 degrees.

Computing[link]

Codepoints[link]

The pound sign has Unicode code point U+00A3 £ pound sign (inherited from Latin-1).^[1] It has a HTML entity reference of £ and has an XML decimal entity reference of £.

The lira sign has Unicode code point U+20A4 ₤ lira sign, decimal entity reference ₤. Unicode notes that this is not widely used, and the preferred sign for lira is the pound sign.^[2]

Entry methods[link]

Prior to the introduction of the IBM PC there was no unique accepted standard for entering, displaying, printing, or storing the £ sign in the UK computer industry. On personal computers prior to the PC the "#" key was often used; sometimes it was displayed on screen as "#", but many printers could be set up to print "£" where "#" was sent to the printer by an application program. Keying in, storing, displaying, and printing the sign often required special setup. The "#" sign is referred to as the "hash symbol" in the UK, but it is sometimes called the "pound sign" in non-Sterling countries (though in reference to the unit of weight, not the unit of currency). It is also known as the number symbol or key.

The Commodore 64 computer included a dedicated key for the pound sign (to the right of the number row). The BBC Micro used a variant of ASCII that replaced the backtick ("`", character 96, hex 60) with the pound sign (ISO/IEC 8859 had not yet been standardised, and it was advantageous to have commonly-used characters available in the lower, 7-bit ASCII table), denoted as CHR$96 or (hex) CHR$&60. Since the BBC Micro used a Teletext mode as standard, this means that the pound sign is in the 7-bit ASCII variant used on Teletext systems such as Ceefax, ORACLE and Teletext Ltd too.

The PC UK keyboard layout has the "£" symbol on the 3 number key and is typed using Shift+3. On a US-International keyboard, the "£" can be entered using Shift+AltGr+4 or Shift+Ctrl+Alt+4. Under Microsoft Windows it can also be generated through the Alt keycodes 0163 and 156, and in MS-DOS by Alt-156.

The symbol "£" is in the MacRoman character set and can be generated on most non-UK Mac OS keyboard layouts which do not have a dedicated key for it, typically through Option+3. On UK Apple Mac keyboards, this is reversed, with the "£" symbol on the number 3 key, typed using Shift+3, and the number sign ("#") generated by Option+3.

The Compose key sequence is 'L' and '-'.

On Latin-alphabet typewriters lacking a "£" symbol type element, a reasonable approximation can be made by typing an upper-case "L", backspacing, then typing a lower-case "f" over it.

Computer printing from wordprocessing packages[link]

In the 1980s the two main standards for the print codes for a pound sign were ASCII 186 for the HP Laserjet and ASCII 156 for most other printers including the IBM Quietwriter and Epson dot matrix printers. In order to print a pound sign each word processor needed to be set up individually to print the sign for the particular printer.

For many wordprocessing packages a terminate and stay resident program (TSR) was needed to convert the code generated by the package into the right code for the printer. Packages such as Wordperfect had utilities to set up this conversion without needing a TSR.

See also[link]

• Currency sign
• Pound (currency)
• Ł ł : Latin letter L with stroke

References[link]

1. ^ http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0080.pdf
2. ^ http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U20A0.pdf

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Kevin Fowler
Kevin Fowler at the Texas Parks and Wildlife Expo 2007 as spokesman for The Texas water safety campaign, Nobody's Waterproof.
Background information
Born	ca. 1966
Origin	Amarillo, Texas, USA
Genres	Country
Occupations	Singer-songwriter
Instruments	Vocals, rhythm guitar
Years active	2000–present
Labels	Tin Roof Equity Super Loud Lyric Street Average Joe's Entertainment
Associated acts	Mark Chesnutt Montgomery Gentry Dangerous Toys
Website	http://www.kevinfowler.com

Kevin Fowler (born ca. 1966 in Amarillo, Texas) is an American Texas Country artist. He has released five studio albums, and has charted three singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, including the top 40 hit "Pound Sign (#?*!)". In addition, he wrote Sammy Kershaw's 2003 single "Beer, Bait & Ammo", Mark Chesnutt's 2004 single "The Lord Loves the Drinkin' Man" and Montgomery Gentry's 2009 single "Long Line of Losers".

Biography[link]

Fowler was the younger of two children. His father introduced him to country music when he was a child, and as a teenager Fowler also developed a liking for rock music.^[1]

He graduated in 1984 from Tascosa High School in Amarillo.

Long interested in making music, Fowler began piano lessons as a young child. When he was twenty, he realized that he wanted to seriously pursue a career in music and moved to Los Angeles, California, to attend the Guitar Institute of Technology. For the next year, he learned how to play the guitar and began writing songs.^[1]

After gaining a good knowledge of the guitar, Fowler left L.A. for Austin, Texas. He was a guitarist with the rock band Dangerous Toys in the early 1990s, but left to form his own Southern hard-rock band, Thunderfoot. In 1998, he left rock music all together to form a new band that would concentrate instead on Texas country music. Fowler and his new band earned themselves a weekly gig at Babe's on Sixth Street in Austin. Two years later, with no recording contracts, Fowler recorded and released his own debut album, Beer, Bait, and Ammo. This album sold over 30,000 copies in Texas, with the title track receiving a great deal of airplay. This song was popular enough that Mark Chesnutt began playing it in his live show, and Sammy Kershaw recorded it for one of his own albums.^[1]

Fowler signed with country singer Clint Black's independent Equity Music (a label distributed by Koch Entertainment) and released two additional albums for that label until Equity ceased operations in December 2008.^[2] Montgomery Gentry recorded a cover of Fowler's "Long Line of Losers."^[3]

In January 2010, Fowler signed to Lyric Street Records, releasing "Beer Season" that same month.^[3] His second single, "Pound Sign (#?*!)," followed in April. That same month, Lyric Street Records announced its closure, and Fowler was one of four artists to be transferred to parent company Disney Music Group.^[4] In May 2010, "Pound Sign" became Fowler's first Top 40 hit on the country music charts, peaking at #34.^[5]

Fowler also collaborated with country rap artist Colt Ford on the song "Hip Hop in a Honky Tonk", on Ford's 2010 album Chicken & Biscuits, in which he sings vocals on the song's chorus. In 2011, Fowler signed to Ford's label, Average Joe's Entertainment.^[6]

In early 2011, Fowler released the single "Girl in a Truck," which hit number 1 on the Texas Music Chart released Feb. 21, 2011.^[7] The song was released regionally to radio stations in the Texas and Oklahoma areas.

Fowler's sixth album, Chippin' Away, was released via Average Joe's Entertainment in 2011.

Discography[link]

Studio albums[link]

Compilation albums[link]

Live albums[link]

Singles[link]

Music videos[link]

Sources[link]

External links[link]

• Kevin Fowler's official site