Why $ appears on the left side of value? (was: Re: BIDI percentage sign)

[Shervin Afshar]

As far as common knowledge goes[1], this is purely a matter of convention.

But in some banking contexts, I've seen currency values written as follwos:

$200 USD
$200 CAD
$200 AUD
200$00 CVE
€200 EUR
₪200 ILS

My take on this is that, here redundancy is used to avoid ambiguity.

[1]:
http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/11326/what-is-the-difference-between-20-and-20

↪ Shervin

On Fri, Feb 27, 2015 at 10:51 AM, Philippe Verdy <verdy_p at wanadoo.fr> wrote:

> And why Mareicans are putting the currency unit symbol to the right ? It
> is still read *after* the amount...
> The only readon I see is to avoid adding an initial digit when the amount
> is writen over a blank space. You can't add a digit after only because you
> also add the decimal separator and subunits, or because you write these
> subunits with a small fraction, or in superscript.. My feeling is that this
> is a purely typographical tradition and it ia not related to the way you
> read it loud.
> For othe measurement units, the unit symbol is placed after the number,
> not before. This has nothing to do with the Bidi ordering : that symbol
> preserves its existing ordering even if you place it after or before by the
> choice of the redactor and his perception of traditions. Number figures use
> a different system than the rest of the text.
>
> 2015-02-27 19:14 GMT+01:00 James Lin <James_Lin at symantec.com>:
>
>> Hi
>> I looked through the Unicode standard Annex #9 and unable to find out if
>> percentage sign "%" should reside on the LEFT of the numeric character or
>> RIGHT?
>>
>> My understanding is if the numeric is in Latin or Western Arabic number,
>> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0, "%" sign should be on the RIGHT: 12%, 54%;   For
>> Eastern Arabic, "%" sign should be on the LEFT:  %٩٦٥
>>
>> Is this correct?
>>
>> Thank you
>> -James
>>
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