13.   A final miscellany

13.6   Why is including the pound sign in messages a problem?

As mentioned in the previous section, email and news were originally only intended to transport 7-bit ASCII text (i.e. characters whose decimal equivalent lies between 0 and 127) rather than 8-bit characters. The pound currency symbol unfortunately corresponds to decimal 163 (usually), and thus cannot be guaranteed to pass through mail or news machines unaltered. Even where it does, the reader may be using a character set which has different equivalences for character numbers 128-255 (especially likely if the reader is outside the UK).

For email, if your software will (like Turnpike) handle MIME (explained in the previous section) and you know that the software of the intended recipient will also do so, then MIME is the best solution. Otherwise, and in news postings, instead of using the pound symbol follow the convention of preceding the value with the acronym GBP, eg GBP 70 indicates 70 pounds sterling. You may also see the non-standard acronym UKP used.

For more information on how to handle amounts in other currencies see:

http://www.jhall.demon.co.uk/currency/
  

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