[WikiEN-l] Worst. Survey. Ever.

[Andrew Gray]

2008/11/4 Andrew Cates <Andrew at soschildren.org>:
>>> Come on, every bank statement of yours will tell you the ISO code of
>>> the currency your account is in, you will probably find it on every
>>> magazine that you read and so on and so on. Please don't tell me that
>>> this is such an academic thing...
>
> This is completely untrue in England too. I have two bank accounts
> with two different large high street banks and have just spent five
> minutes looking at statements from them both. There is definitely no
> ISO code. I have also tried two newspapers, a utility bill, half a
> dozen invoices and I am none the wiser. If I was given an hour to find
> it offline I think I would fail (and I still have no clue what it is).
> I guess Google or Wikipedia would work but I have never heard of an
> ISO code for currency even though I have traveled to 48 countries etc
> etc...

I have to concur - I've just discovered that my bank statement, quite
remarkably, doesn't even have the word "pounds" on it, much less a
code or the £ symbol. (I hope they haven't redenominated it in ZWD
when I wasn't looking)

It's intuitive when you see the code written down; I would be
comfortable guessing that most people would look at 57.43 GBP and
recognise it as "£57.43". But it's intuitive to go from the code to
the currency but not the other way around. In the case of the UK, I
suspect most people would look at U-- and then B-- before ending up at
G--...

This is a particularly confusing case for the UK, though! Most
countries have it a lot simpler.

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk