Pound sign  The pound sign is the symbol for the pound sterling – the currency of the United Kingdom and previously of Great Britain and of the Kingdom of England. The same symbol is used for other currencies called pound, such as the Gibraltar pound, the Egyptian pound, and the Syrian pound. A similar symbol (with two bars) was used on some banknotes from time to time but the Bank of England has not done so since 1975. (This two-bar symbol is also used for currencies named "lira", for example the (withdrawn) Italian lira). For some people in the US, "pound sign" refers to the symbol (number sign). The symbol derives from the upper case Latin letter , representing "libra pondo", the basic unit of weight in the Roman Empire, which in turn is derived from the Latin word, "libra", meaning scales or a balance. The pound became an English unit of weight and in England became defined as the tower pound (equivalent to 350 grams) of sterling silver. According to the Royal Mint Museum: However, the simple letter L, in lower- or uppercase, was used to represent the pound sterling in printed books and newspapers until well into the 19th century. In the blackletter type used until the seventeenth century, the letter L is rendered as formula_1. The pound sign is placed before the number (e.g. "£12,000") and separated from the following digits by no space or only a thin space. In Canadian English the symbols and are both called the pound sign, but the # is also known as the 'number sign' and as the 'noughts-and-crosses board'. In American English, the term "pound sign" usually refers to the symbol (number sign), and the corresponding telephone key is called the "pound key". Banknotes issued by the Bank of England since 1975 have only used the single bar style as a pound sign. The Bank used both the two-bar style () and the one-bar style () (and sometimes a figure without any symbol whatever) more or less equally since 1725 until 1971, intermittently and sometimes concurrently. In typography, the symbols are allographs style choices when used to represent the pound and both use the same POUND SIGN Unicode code point, (not LIRA SIGN despite its looking the same). In the eighteenth-century Caslon metal fonts, the pound sign was identical to an italic uppercase J, rotated 180 degrees. In the Unicode standard, the symbol £ is called POUND SIGN and the symbol ₤ is the LIRA SIGN.