Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (currency)

Comments

This is a placeholder while I can come up with an eloquent way of stating that there needs to be a Wikipedia-wide convention on how to indicate currencies (US dollars vs. Australian dollars, etc.) and of which symbols to use (no one seems to know what to do about the Yuan). --Dante Alighieri 01:17 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I suggest we use the ISO standard 3-letter currency codes defined in ISO 4217. This would have a number of advantages:

1. the system already exists and is standardised
2. we don't have to invent/decide which name to use, eg. the Renminbi is CNY
3. every currency has a unique code, which prevents ambiguity

-- Cabalamat 16:28, 3 Sep 2003 (UTC)

The trouble is, most people don't know the codes. "2000 chinese renminbi" is more understandable than "CNY 2000" DJ Clayworth 22:00, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

In general, we defer to whatever is common practice for published English works in the English encyclopedia, why not do that here? It's probably reasonable to expect almost all English speakers to recognize the U.S. dollar, English pound, and Euro symbols, so just use them. Otherwise, the unit is usually just written out ("one million Japanese yen"). What do the style guides suggest?? I can imagine "$1 million (Australian)" being fine. If there's a need for an abbreviation (because the unit repeats throughout the article), use the abbreviation from ISO 4217, but define the abbreviation inside the article before using it. If you use almost all the abbreviations, at least cross-reference to the ISO page. -- Dwheeler

While I am normally a big fan of following ISO, this is one case where use of the standard is simply contrary to good English style. A good example is the Egyptian pound; ISO 4217 calls for EGP, which is virtually never used in Egypt (except maybe at foreign exchange counters). There are two commonly used abbreviations: in Arabic it is simply the letter gim (for guinea), and in English and other European languages it is L.E., for livre(s) egyptienne(s). In an article dealing with Egypt in English, the only acceptable abbreviation would be L.E., which in Wikipedia should be defined on first occurrence in an article. Similary, GBP should be £, JPY ¥, EUR €, etc. —Tkinias 16:55, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I am absolutely against using abbreviations except for the most commonly known symbols, as Tkinias suggested. I think there should be a preference for spelling out the currency -- 1,000 U.S. dollars (although $1,000 is also perfectly acceptable), 1,000 pounds sterling, 1,000 Australian dollars, 1,000 euros, 1,000 Japanese yen, etc. acsenray

If $1,000 is also perfectly acceptable then €1,000 is also acceptable. --Gangulf 08:11, 27 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Shouldn't the symbols for sterling (£) and yen be acceptable... as they are practically unique to their own respective areas... the dollar symbol is much more widespread.

"$1" would confuse me. Wikipedia lists over 30 currencies that use "$" (here). Only USD uses the S-with-two-bars symbol, but that's hard to type.

The ideal solution is the same as the Wikipedia date standard; encode the ISO amount in the text, and have Wikipedia software display the article in a commonly understood format containing a link to the currency's definition. (E.g. "[[USD]]" would become equivalent to: "[[USD|$]]" - which Wikipedia would render as S-with-two-bars.) Although this envolves developer work it has the advantages of:

1. Readability & Comprehension where the ISO symbols are obscure.
2. Lack of ambiguity, and other advantages of ISO (listed at the top of the page by Cabalamat).
3. Ability to customize, and therefore standardize, the way currency amounts are shown. (Like the date preferences.)
4. Makes it easier to insert exotic currency signs, which make Wikipdeia prettier.
5. Deals with the technical problem of rendering unicode symbols in all browsers (probably through user preferences to display ISO-4217 where unicode is mangled).

If ISO 4217 is not used, the convention must specify an efficient way of discussing the AUD/USD exchange rate, old Turkish Lira vs. new Lira, and prevent confusion of currencies with similar names. Wragge 16:19, 2005 Apr 17 (UTC)

On the dollar issue: surely a good idea (especially for the dollar) would be to use, for example, US$, AUS$ and Z$ or ZIM$ (although ZIM$ is more explicit, I have never seen it. Z$ seems quite common). I use R 0,00 for rands (my home currency), but recognise ZAR (ISO code) in international contexts. Same with british pounds (GBP). However, maybe a new notation like [[ISO-code]] is better. It makes hard-to-type (like pounds, euros and new sheqels on my keyboard) much easier.

User:Taejo made the above comment, by the way. I now think that there is an even more important benefit of the new notation: Converting amounts. A page I was editing yesterday lists amounts in lac, in the format "Rs 29 lac"; not being used to the Pakistani exchange rate I really don't know how significant that is, and to be of much use to the average reader the amount must be converted into a well known currency - presumably in the (configurable) format: Rs 29 lac (24 million USD).

Naturally this raises many issues about which exchange rate to use (PPP vs nominal, and which year's rate to use) but any choice would make an unintelligable amount into something which could be immediately understood (as an order of magnitude).

Any thoughts? Wragge 08:55, 2005 Jun 1 (UTC)

Hmm, interesting... yes, having a standard certainly would make it easy to do auto-conversions. Maybe someone should make a dev request? ;) --Dante Alighieri | Talk 20:53, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

References

• Merriam-Webster chart: comprehensive but incomplete, China & Argentina have no symbol
  • p.s. The second "Yuan -- See DOLLAR" refers to New Taiwan Dollar, whose symbol is NT$.
• Chinese-English bilingual table, Traditional Chinese version
  • Abbreviations used when there's no symbol.

Style not naming convention?

The same issue came up in this discussion: Currency Style Dismbiguation. Surely this is a Style question rather than a naming convention? (i.e. it refers to the formatting within articles rather than how they are named). There should definitely be some kind of style guideline for currency. NPOV makes frequent reference to the international nature of Wikipedia (see especially Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#Anglo-American_focus), and yet despite twenty three countries using the dollar there are several articles in which it is implicitly used solely for the U. S. dollar. In many articles of a specifically national nature this is not an issue (that it is US$ is obvious from the U. S. context of the whole article), but there is a clear NPOV bias in comments like this from 2004: "The People's Republic of China to invest $20 billion dollars in Argentina, a deal signed days before the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum to be held in the City of Santiago in Chile." Where more specific terms are used there are several styles throughout Wikipedia, so it needs to be standardised.

Of the major style guides, the APA and the MLA say nothing, and the Chicago Manual of Style discusses it briefly but only mentions one example: "In Canada the current quotation was $2.69 (U.S. $2.47) a pound." The MHRA Style Guide recommends using an appropriate abbreviation before the symbol (C$/Can$, A$/Aus$, NZ$).

International newspapers tend to display the same Americentric bias: Guardian "abbreviate dollars like this: $50 (US dollars); A$50 (Australian dollars); HK$50 (Hong Kong dollars)" Times "with figures use $5 (when American), A$5 (Australian), C$5 (Canadian), S$5 (Singapore) and so on"

The World Bank style guide World Bank (pdf) uses "U.S. dollars or US$"

In Wikipedia, most articles already use some variation of the style suggested in the international papers, MHRA, and World Bank, for example:

• Montréal-Mirabel International Airport "were rumored to cost one million Canadian dollars apiece"
• Bretton Woods system "U. S. dollars"

But some pages with an international focus need to be standardized:

• Purchasing power parity

"For example, GDP per capita in China is ca. 1,400 U.S. Dollars, while on a PPP basis, it is ca. 6,200 US$. At the other extreme, Japan's nominal GDP per capita is ca. 37,600 US$, but its PPP figure is only 31,400 US$"

• Educational Testing Service

"The Educational Testing Service (or ETS) is the world's largest private educational testing and measurement organization, operating on a annual budget of approximately $900 million. ETS develops various standardized examinations primarily in the United States, but they also administer tests such as TOEFL in most nations. "

• Bank of Credit and Commerce International

"The Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was a major international bank founded in Pakistan in 1972. At its peak, it operated in 78 countries, had over 400 branches, and claimed assets of $25 billion."

I would suggest a few things:

1. use the convention "US$100", "A$2000", "U. S. dollars", "Australian dollars", never "$200 (US)" "$US200".
2. Keep the ISO 4217 link in the articles on the currency only, and if necessary (it's overkill to link every single currency symbol used) link to the appropriate currency.
3. write it into the Style Guide Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)
4. establish a policy on when to use $ (i.e. in strictly national articles in which there is no possibility of monetary ambiguity?).

Ziggurat 02:11, 28 September 2005 (UTC)