SYM·0082 · Euro
Euro
the glyph that shipped with a spec sheet
- Unicode
- U+20AC euro sign
- Meaning
- The currency of the euro area. The official reading: a Greek epsilon for the classical roots of Europe, crossed by two parallel bars for stability.
- History
- Announced by the European Commission in December 1996, after a shortlist was cut from thirty designs to ten and then to two. It is one of the very few glyphs in daily use released with a published construction specification — exact geometry, exact colours — which type designers promptly overrode, because a mark drawn to a fixed spec cannot sit correctly in a hundred different typefaces.
- Variants
- As many as there are typefaces. Almost none match the published construction; the spec survives on the Commission’s own materials and nowhere else.
- Related
- £ ¥ ₹ ₿ currency marks with datable births — ₹ from a 2010 competition, ₿ crowd-iterated.
- Appears
- Every price in the euro area, and a keyboard key across the continent.
- Evolution
- Committee brief → published specification → a glyph redrawn by every foundry that ever set it.
Sources · 3
- documented European Commission, December 1996 — the announcement, the official epsilon-and-stability explanation, and the published construction and colour specification.
- documented The Unicode Standard, U+20AC EURO SIGN.
- traditional Alain Billiet as the designer of the winning entry. Very widely credited; the Commission has consistently presented the result as the work of an internal team, so the attribution is reported rather than confirmed.