Symbols of Success: Yen, Euros, and the Pound

Does this sound familiar? You stare at your keyboard, searching vainly for the symbol you need to display an amount in Yen, British Sterling, or Euros. Frustrated, you decide it’s just easier to spell it out. Or, perhaps you open up your web browser, Google for some currency converter website, cut and paste the appropriate character into your document and then to reformat it to match the typeface in your document? There’s an easier way to get the right symbol… and you don’t have to be a typesetting expert, graphic designer, or word processing power user. Both OS X (Macintosh) and Windows operating systems offer keystroke commands allowing you to quickly insert the correct symbol into a document.

One important note: to use the Windows symbols you need to have your numeric lock (numlock) on and use the numeric key pad on the right hand side of your keyboard.

Euro (€)
OS X - Hold down both the Shift and Option keys and type ‘2’
Windows – Hold down the Alt key and type 0128

Yen (¥)
OS X – Hold down the Option key and type ‘y’
Windows – Hold down the Alt key and type 0165

British Sterling, aka the ‘pound’ (£)
OS X – Hold down the Option key and type ‘3’
Windows – Hold down the Alt key and type 0163