Full and abbreviated terms for money are acceptable, provided that they are used consistently. Full versions are recommended in prose, while abbreviated versions are suitable for tables and captions.

In text, use the ‘£’ symbol when figures are used, for example, ‘Fees are set to remain at £9,250 for 2018–19.’

For sums not including pence, do not use decimal points, for example ‘£6’, not ‘£6.00’. Do not use ‘k’ to abbreviate thousands; write the full figure instead, for example, ‘£100,000’.

When describing British currency, use ‘pound’, for example, ‘The pound fell against the euro today’. Do not use ‘GBP’ in prose.

Full version	Abbreviation
One penny	1p
Two pence (up to 99 pence)	2p
£5 billion	£5bn
$10 million	$10m
£1 trillion	£1trn

Writing about other currencies

When writing about other currencies, the name of the currency should be in lowercase.

For euros, use the symbol ‘€’ followed by the figure. This practice is used for the following other European currencies:

Full version	Abbreviation
Danish krone (plural kroner)	DKr
Norwegian krone (plural kroner)	NKr
Swiss franc	SFr
Swedish krona (plural kronor)	SKr

For US dollars, the symbol ‘$’ is sufficient abbreviation, unless there is a mixture of dollar currencies in the text. For other dollar currencies, ‘$’ should be prefixed with the country abbreviation.

Full version	Abbreviation
Australian dollars	A$
Canadian dollars	C$
Hong Kong dollars	HK$
Malaysian dollars	M$
Taiwanese dollars	NT$
New Zealand dollars	NZ$
Singaporean dollars	S$

For all other currencies, write the figure first followed by the currency name, for example, ‘100 million yuan’.

Find out more

A list of global currencies and their symbols is available on the XE website.