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Cent (currency)

Monetary unit in many national currencies

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  • 2 chapters
United States One Cent Obverse
United States Mint · Public domain

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The United States one cent coin is generally known by the nickname "penny", alluding to the British coin and unit of that name. Australia ended production of its 1c coin in 1990. New Zealand last produced its 1c coin in 1988, as did Canada in 2012 and the US in 2025. Some Eurozone countries ended production of the 1 euro cent coin, most recently Slovakia in 2022.

Symbol

The cent may be represented by the cent sign, written in various ways according to the national convention and font choice. The most commonly seen forms are a minuscule letter c crossed by a diagonal stroke, a c crossed by a vertical line, or a simple c, depending on the currency (see below). Cent amounts from 1 to 99 can be represented as one or two digits followed by the appropriate abbreviation (2¢, 5c, 75¢, 99c), or as a subdivision of the base unit ($0.75, €0.99). In some countries, longer abbreviations, like “ct.”, are used. Languages that use other alphabets have their own abbreviations and conventions.

The cent symbol has largely fallen into disuse since the mid-20th century as inflation has resulted in very few things being priced in cents in any currency. It was included on US typewriter keyboards, but has not been adopted on computers.

The CJK Compatibility Unicode block includes the character ⟨㌣⟩, a square version of セント, sento, "cent" in Japanese.

North American cent sign

The cent sign appeared as the shifted character on the 6 key of American manual typewriters, but the freestanding circumflex on computer keyboards has taken over that position.

Orthography

When written in English and Mexican Spanish, the cent sign (¢ or c) follows the amount (with no space between)—for example, 2¢ and $0.02, or 2c and €0.02. Conventions in other languages may vary. For example, in Canada, French texts add a non-breaking space between the amount and the sign: 2 ¢.

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