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DanBC

Especially since in American you'd write 10c, and not c10.

There's a stack exchange comment saying it's harder to forge $20 to $320 than it is to forge 20$ to 320$.

http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/11326/what-is-the...

http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/34013/why-is-the-...

I'd like to know why we do it too. I mean, I know "just because" but I'd like to know how it started.

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The forging statement seems rather silly. $20 -> $200 is still a pretty good mark up, plus in cheques or similar paper based money transfers it's normal to have the amount written out in words as well as in numerals.

You can't easily change $20.00 to $200.00. You could try changing it to $20.000.00, but that would probably overflow whatever box it's written in, since the amount is usually right-justified to begin with.

The decimal point protects the right edge of the amount, while the dollar sign protects the left edge.

Similarly, when people write out a number in English on a check, they often write "Twenty dollars only", not just "Twenty dollars", in order to prevent other words from being added to the end, e.g. "Twenty dollars and a hundred". (There's a nursery rhyme that goes "four and twenty blackbirds", so writing the smaller number first is clearly not unheard of.)

For anything under 100, in German and Dutch the least significant number goes first: one and thirty, eight and ninety. 100 and above goes before that, so 121 is 'one hundred one and twenty'. The nursery rhyme might be inspired by that, or maybe there was something similar in English back in the day, but either way - I'd say it's highly unusual to put those numbers in that order in English.

This is getting tangential, but the French way of counting seems to be even more strange with certain numbers. 93 is "quatre-vingt-treize", i.e. "four-twenties-and-thirteen".

(Except in Belgium and Switzerland and this-one-valley-in-Italy et cetera, where it is just "nonante-trois".)

Compared to that, "drei-und-neunzig" is still not bad.

Apparently it was common in the south as well. Some writer who was fined in the 19th Century then lampooned the magistrate as "Monsieur Nonante-Cinque", the fine having been 95 francs.

It is also common to write cents/fractions either as superscript, superscript with a line below the cents value, or as a full fraction 99/100

There's a stack exchange comment saying it's harder to forge $20 to $320 than it is to forge 20$ to 320$.

This is why you fill the empty part of the field with a long horizontal line.

I always just write the change in a xx/100 format, which would make it obvious if someone else filled in more numbers.

Was this really a problem at some point? My friends have told me about it, but my parents never bothered to mention it to me growing up.

From a quick google image search, it appears that at least some EU checks also follow the format of putting the currency symbol before the numerical amount. It makes sense on the face of things that $200.00 is harder to alter than 200.00$ .

that $200.00 is harder to alter

Luckily, though, it is common to use commas to separate groups of three digits: $200,000.00 But this means a change of a factor 1000 which might be less useful than the original 20$ -> 320$ example.

That depends on locale other countrys do not use commas as separators in the same way

As a european, my feeling is that we are more and more copying american way of using $ when we use €.

The forging rationale is likely very outdated now.

If I have a legal document where I need to be certain of its provenance after going out into the world, it is a digitally signed PDF.

If I print a paper check where the numbers need to be tamper-resistant against casual forging, I use a secure number font. I don't anticipate ever being in a position where my adversary in that use case is a determined, professional forger. I'd insist upon encrypted and/or insured electronic transactions, like through SWIFT or ACH, before I get to the point I'd be worried about professional forgers.

Sure, it's outdated now, but habits of accounting tend to die hard.

In Chinese, some characters representing numbers are so trivially forgible by adding a stroke or two (1 = 一, 2 = 二, 3 = 三, 10 = 十, 1000 = 千) that accountants came up with complicated substitutes that cannot be altered to mean any other number (1 = 壹, 2 = 贰, 3 = 叁, 10 = 拾, 1000 = 仟). The substitutes are still widely used in legal and financial documents.

Also semi professional forging of paper documents still goes on. See Paul Ceglia vs Facebook for an entertaining example.

eg http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/facebooks-ma...

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