Glossary entry (derived from question below)
English term
USD
The GDP of the US in 2009 was USD 183.2 billion.
The GDP of the US in 2009 was US$183.2 billion.
All your assistance is very much appreciated!
| 4 +9 | USD 183.2 billion |
Jenni Lukac (X)
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| 5 +1 | USD, con espacio y detrás |
CARMEN MAESTRO
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| From The Economist Style Guide |
James A. Walsh
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Sep 24, 2012 15:05: philgoddard changed "Language pair" from "Spanish to English" to "English"
Non-PRO (1): TechLawDC
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Responses
USD 183.2 billion
| agree |
Charles Davis
: This is certainly approved EU style. Chicago is not much help here.
9 mins
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Cheers and thanks, Charles. Yes, the European Commission's style guide coincides with this form.
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| agree |
Liz Dexter (was Broomfield)
10 mins
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Cheers and thanks, Liz.
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| agree |
Veronika McLaren
11 mins
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Cheers and thanks, Veronika.
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| agree |
Tony M
: In general, there should always be a non-breaking narrow space between whichever currency symbol is used and the figures.
18 mins
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Thanks, Tony. There's the rub. It would be interesting if more clients paid attention to such niceties.
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| agree |
jccantrell
: This is how I use it. If only for USA domestic consumption (not international), I would just use $.
40 mins
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Thanks, JC. I do the same.
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| agree |
AllegroTrans
3 hrs
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Thanks very much, AllegroTrans.
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| agree |
roxanasabou
5 hrs
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Thanks very much, Roxana.
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| agree |
James A. Walsh
7 hrs
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Cheers and thanks, James.
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| agree |
Phong Le
13 hrs
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Cheers and thanks, Phong.
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Law, business & international bodies
Native in: Spanish
Works in: English to Spanish, French to Spanish
USD, con espacio y detrás
Saludos!
| Hola Carmen, Charles tiene razón pero me era interesante tu respuesta también. Gracias de todos modos. |
| agree |
Charles Davis
: Correcto en español, pero creo que Mary quiere saber qué hacer en inglés.
9 mins
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Uppps, pues yo pensé qué quería saber qué hacer en español....
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| neutral |
NancyLynn
: with Charles
14 mins
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yo pensé qué quería saber qué hacer en español....
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Reference comments
Spain
A cut above the rest in translation...
Native in: English (Variants: Irish, US, UK) 
, Spanish (Variants: Latin American, Standard-Spain)
Works in: Spanish to English, French to English, English to Spanish, and 2 more.
From The Economist Style Guide
Use $ as the standard currency and, on first mention of sums in all other currencies except euros, give a dollar conversion in brackets.
Apart from those currencies that are written out in full (see below), write the abbreviation followed by the number.
___________________
America
Dollar, abbreviated as $, will do generally; US$ if there is a mixture of dollar currencies (see below)
Cents, abbreviated as c; but spell out, unless part of a larger number: $4.99
Other dollar currencies
A$ Australian dollars
NT$ Taiwanese dollars
C$ Canadian dollars
NZ$ New Zealand dollars
HK$ Hong Kong dollars
S$ Singaporean dollars
M$ Malaysian dollars
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Note added at 7 hrs (2012-09-24 22:19:11 GMT)
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You're very welcome, Mary! This guide used to be available for free online; however, they took it off in recent years and it has to be paid for now. I have a copy that I compiled myself by copying and pasting the content when it was last available for free (2008, I believe, shh...). Very useful guide that I swear by. Saludos :)
| James, cheers for the great reference! |
Discussion
Mary: here's the European Interinstitutional Style Guide on the subject (not relevant for you, I suspect):
http://publications.europa.eu/code/en/en-370303.htm
http://www.adamsdrafting.com/2008/03/10/stating-amounts-of-m...
Certainly one clear option is to use the ISO 4217 code, in this case USD, and if you do, it should go before the figure in English and afterwards in Spanish, separated from the figure in both cases by a space, as Carmen and Jenni have both said for their respective languages.
US$ is also valid. The Chicago manual gives this example: "In Canada the current quotation was $2.69 (U.S. $2.47) a pound", using points after U and S and a space between U.S. and $. But by no means everyone follows Chicago on this point. Certainly there should be no space between the dollar (or other currency) symbol and the figure in English, but most people wouldn't separate "US" (or A for Australian or C for Canadian) and the $ symbol either.
Here is a very useful blog page on the subject, which includes the following paragraph:
"Always put a space between the currency code and the numeral: EUR 2,400,000. If a currency sign consists of one or more letters, put a space between the currency sign and the numeral: SFr. 334,583. But if the currency sign consists of a symbol, don’t use a space, even if you add one or more letters in front of the symbol: C$655,000."