Pound (currency) symbol in LaTeX???

[Alexis M]

I cant get the pound (as in "UK pounds sterling") symbol to print in
LaTeX.

I tried the "£" symbol by itself but nothing prints (although I dont get
any errors when I run LaTeX).

How do I get this symbol?

Thanks

Alexis M

[Robin Fairbairns]

Alexis M <mamp47...@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
>I cant get the pound (as in "UK pounds sterling") symbol to print in
>LaTeX.

\pounds; ends up in italics, unless you use an 8-bit font (such as a
t1- or ly1-encoded one).

>I tried the "Ł" symbol by itself but nothing prints (although I dont get

>any errors when I run LaTeX).
>
>How do I get this symbol?

if you say

\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}

in your document preamble, latex will even deal with the `Ł' character
in your input for you.
--
Robin Fairbairns, Cambridge

[Rowland McDonnell]

Robin Fairbairns <r...@betsy.cl.cam.ac.uk> wrote:

> Alexis M <mamp47...@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
> >I cant get the pound (as in "UK pounds sterling") symbol to print in
> >LaTeX.
>
> \pounds; ends up in italics, unless you use an 8-bit font (such as a
> t1- or ly1-encoded one).

OT1 encoded Computer Modern has a special upright italic fount for this
job; there's no particular reason why a similar bodge shouldn't be done
for other founts. Mind you, T1 *is* `better'.

> >I tried the "Ł" symbol by itself but nothing prints (although I dont get
> >any errors when I run LaTeX).
> >
> >How do I get this symbol?
>
> if you say
>
> \usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
>
> in your document preamble, latex will even deal with the `Ł' character
> in your input for you.

Depending on your computer, of course; \usepackage[applemac]{inputenc}
is what works for me.

Rowland.

--
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[Robin Fairbairns]

Rowland McDonnell <real-addr...@flur.bltigibbet> wrote:
>Robin Fairbairns <r...@betsy.cl.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>> Alexis M <mamp47...@dial.pipex.com> wrote:
>> >I tried the "Ł" symbol by itself but nothing prints (although I dont get
>> >any errors when I run LaTeX).
>> >
>> >How do I get this symbol?
>>
>> if you say
>>
>> \usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
>>
>> in your document preamble, latex will even deal with the `Ł' character
>> in your input for you.
>
>Depending on your computer, of course; \usepackage[applemac]{inputenc}
>is what works for me.

aha. i actually checked alexis' posting machine (as evidenced in the
post's headers), and it would appear to be a linux box. so, for once,
when i said `you', i meant alexis.

people as a whole tend to be a little loose with pronouns when posting
to usenet. for once, _i_ was being precise...
--
Robin Fairbairns, Cambridge

[Rowland McDonnell]

Robin Fairbairns <r...@betsy.cl.cam.ac.uk> wrote:

[snip]

> aha. i actually checked alexis' posting machine (as evidenced in the
> post's headers), and it would appear to be a linux box. so, for once,
> when i said `you', i meant alexis.
>
> people as a whole tend to be a little loose with pronouns when posting
> to usenet. for once, _i_ was being precise...

I checked the headers too; but the thing is that it's an invalid
assumption that the OS used for news posting is the same one as used for
(La)TeXing. I know one Usenet poster who gets most of her Usenet access
sat at a PC AT, logged in to a Unix machine, but uses a Mac for
LaTeXing.

Rowland.
(being picky)

[nol...@gmail.com]

Just put it outside the $ signs of the mathmode.

For example

The spot exchange rate for dollars to pounds is $1.4 \$/$ \pounds .


But if you need to put inside a math environment, use as a text, for example:

\begin{align*}
F^P_{t,T}(\text{\pounds}) = x_0 e^{-r_f T}
\end{align*}

[Peter Flynn]

Use \textsterling from the textcomp package. \pounds is decades obsolete.

///Peter

[Fritz Wuehler]

> Use \textsterling from the textcomp package. \pounds is decades
> obsolete.

Might be too early to say \textsterling obsoletes \pounds. Bizarre
things happen when the datatool package encounters \textsterling.

[Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)]

> > Use \textsterling from the textcomp package. \pounds is decades
> > obsolete.

What is the difference?

[Ulrike Fischer]

Am Wed, 26 Aug 2015 07:02:02 +0000 (UTC) schrieb
hel...@asclothestro.multivax.dePhillip Helbig:

>>> Use \textsterling from the textcomp package. \pounds is decades
>>> obsolete.

> What is the difference?

\pounds is a robust command defined in the kernel as

\DeclareRobustCommand{\pounds}{%

\ifmmode\mathsterling\else\textsterling\fi}

So it works in math and text (with different output) and can be used
safely in moving arguments.

\mathsterling / \textsterling are defined in the kernel too and are
used in the definition of \pounds.

You don't need the textcomp package to use them, but loading either
textcomp or T1-encoding is a good idea as in OT1-encoding some fonts
put a dollar in the slot of the pound:

\documentclass{report}
%\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
%\usepackage{textcomp}
\usepackage{tgtermes}
\begin{document}
1\pounds
1\textsterling
\end{document}



I don't see any reason to declare \pounds as "obsolete".



--
Ulrike Fischer
http://www.troubleshooting-tex.de/

[Peter Flynn]

Actually, far better to use UTF-8 and XeLaTeX and just type £

///Peter

[Fritz Wuehler]

> > Might be too early to say \textsterling obsoletes \pounds.
> > Bizarre things happen when the datatool package encounters
> > \textsterling.
>
> Actually, far better to use UTF-8 and XeLaTeX and just type £

I'm not familiar with XeLaTeX, and apparently I don't have it as part
of the texlive package. So I tried using "£" with the following two
includes, then fed to pdflatex:

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

It does not even compile when that symbol occurs in a CSV file that is
read by the datatool package:

! FP error: Illegal character � found in float number!.
\FP@errmessage #1->\errmessage {FP error: #1!}

Also, according to Paulo Cereda(*) the "£" renders as a dollar sign
("$") in some cases if it's not italicised. Seems strange, but
probably a good enough reason to avoid it.

So \pounds seems to be the most reliable and predictable construct.

(*) ref:

https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/17853/pounds-and-textsterling-produces-a-dollar-sign

[Peter Flynn]

On 09/03/2015 05:44 AM, Fritz Wuehler wrote:
>>> Might be too early to say \textsterling obsoletes \pounds.
>>> Bizarre things happen when the datatool package encounters
>>> \textsterling.
>>

>> Actually, far better to use UTF-8 and XeLaTeX and just type £

>
> I'm not familiar with XeLaTeX, and apparently I don't have it as part
> of the texlive package.

That sounds wrong. As far as I know it has been included in TeX Live for
some years now. What version are you using?

> So I tried using "£"

That came through here as two separate bytes, probably due to an
underlying Usenet transport encoding, or to Frell's anonymiser.

> with the following two
> includes, then fed to pdflatex:
>
> \usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
> \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

I use utf8x not utf8.

> It does not even compile when that symbol occurs in a CSV file that is
> read by the datatool package:
>

> ! FP error: Illegal character � found in float number!.

> \FP@errmessage #1->\errmessage {FP error: #1!}

This looks like an encoding problem. If you're going to use UTF-8, *all*
your files *must* be in UTF-8 -- you cannot have some in UTF-8 and
others in different encodings (eg ISO 8859-1, ISO 8859-15, Windows-1252,
Mac Roman 8, Big5, DEC Multinational, or anything else [ASCII is OK]).

> Also, according to Paulo Cereda(*) the "£" renders as a dollar sign

> ("$") in some cases if it's not italicised. Seems strange, but
> probably a good enough reason to avoid it.

Not if you read the rest of the post you cited: his problem was caused
by a bogus font encoding.

> So \pounds seems to be the most reliable and predictable construct.

Whatever works for you.

///Peter