I saw a sign advertising a sale with the dollar sign as the S, so it wasn’t just a SALE, it was a $ALE. Involving dollars, and the saving of them, is the implication. This reminded me of a bizarre dream I had years ago. I entirely promise this will not be a boring dream story.

I was in some sort of lecture where the presenter insisted that the proper way to make a dollar sign was with two vertical lines through it rather than one. I don’t think the dream was long at all. That was the extent of it, I think. But what stuck with me was how powerfully the suggestion was made. The lecturer didn’t just prefer the double vertical line, he found the idea that anyone would use only one line to be genuinely repugnant. Not just that it was stylistically out of favor, but like it was a substantive breach of etiquette in civilized society. Propagating single-lined dollar signs was the worst sort of classless behavior. It was surely a sign of low breeding.

When I woke up I was all kinds of confused. I knew it was a dream, but did it come about because I read somewhere that two vertical lines were appropriate? Am I overlooking some important style rule whenever I omit the second line? Do others see my simple, single-lined dollar signs and inwardly scoff? (“Well! Guess who we won’t be inviting to the party now. Can you imagine this…person, and his offensive dollar signs?”) I can hardly quantify the utter, wretched disdain I got from this imaginary double-line advocate regarding single-line dollar signs. Imagine how you would feel if your neighbors, rather than collecting their trash and taking the bin to the curb, elected to just dump it onto your lawn. It’s the sort of derision I feel towards people who toss their cigarette butts out car windows.

With time and maturity, I think I resolved this issue internally and have come to believe that my dollar signs are not inferior. But it’s always been in the back of my mind. There will always be a tiny voice that is a bit scared when I write out a dollar sign. I just have to remember that ASCII is on my side:

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