The ruble sign, ₽, is the currency sign used for the Russian ruble, the official currency of Russia. Its form is a Cyrillic letterР with an additional horizontal stroke.[a] The design was approved on 11 December 2013 after a public poll that took place a month earlier.[1]
In Russian orthography, the sign almost always follows the number (the monetary value), and in many cases there is a space between the two. In English orthography, it usually precedes the number.
History
The five final options in the public poll on the website of Central Bank of Russia. The second of these was chosen.
In the 18th and 19th centuries there was a symbol for the Russian ruble consisting of lower case Cyrillic letters — a rotated р on a у. In the 20th century р. was used to abbreviate the ruble.
In 2007, a group of Russian design bureaus and studios proposed to use ₽, the stroked Cyrillic letter Р to represent the ruble. Soon after, many electronic retailers, restaurants and cafés started to use the sign unofficially. It became very popular and was widely used as a de facto standard.
In November 2013, the Central Bank of Russia finally decided to adopt a national currency sign. It placed a public poll on its website with five pre-chosen options.
A Russian one ruble coin from a special series featuring the ruble sign
The design provided earlier by the design community that was informally yet widely used (₽) was on the poll's list and got the most votes. On 11 December 2013, ₽ was approved as the official sign for the Russian Federation's ruble.[1]
The cryptocurrency Petro, backed by government of Venezuela, uses the same symbol as the Ruble, although usually with a rounder upper part (). A currency symbol used in the Pokémon media franchise is visually similar to the Ruble sign but instead has two strokes ().
Notes
^The cyrillic letter Р commonly represents the alveolar trill/r/, roughly like the "rolled" sound like the Scottish pronunciation of ⟨r⟩ in "curd".
