The shekel sign is a currency sign

Currency sign

A currency sign is a graphic symbol used as a shorthand for a currency's name, especially in reference to amounts of money. They typically employ the first letter or character of the currency, sometimes with minor changes such as ligatures or overlaid vertical or horizontal bars...

 used for the shekel which is the currency

Currency

In economics, currency refers to a generally accepted medium of exchange. These are usually the coins and banknotes of a particular government, which comprise the physical aspects of a nation's money supply...

 of Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

 and the Palestinian Territories

Palestinian territories

The Palestinian territories comprise the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Since the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in 1988, the region is today recognized by three-quarters of the world's countries as the State of Palestine or simply Palestine, although this status is not recognized by the...

.

Israeli new shekel (1986–present)

The Israeli new shekel is denoted in (, ˈʃekel χaˈdaʃ, lit.

Literal translation

Literal translation, or direct translation, is the rendering of text from one language to another "word-for-word" rather than conveying the sense of the original...

 "New Shekel") or by the acronym  (ʃaχ). The symbol was announced officially on 22 September 1985, when the first new shekel banknotes and coins were introduced. It is constructed by combining the two Hebrew letters that constitute the acronym (the first letter of each of the two words): ("ש" and "ח"). Sometimes the "₪" symbol (Unicode 20AA) is used following the number, other times the acronym .
The shekel sign, like the dollar sign

Dollar sign

The dollar or peso sign is a symbol primarily used to indicate the various peso and dollar units of currency around the world.- Origin :...

 ("$"), is usually placed left to the number (i.e. "₪12,000" and not "12,000₪"), but since Hebrew is written from right to left, the symbol is actually written after the number. It is either not separated

Space (punctuation)

In writing, a space is a blank area devoid of content, serving to separate words, letters, numbers, and punctuation. Conventions for interword and intersentence spaces vary among languages, and in some cases the spacing rules are quite complex....

 from the preceding number, or is separated only by a thin space.

Unlike the dollar sign, the new shekel sign is not used that often when handwriting monetary amounts.

The road sign announcing the entrance to an Israeli toll road, such as Highway 6

Highway 6 (Israel)

Highway 6 , widely known as the Trans-Israel Highway or Cross-Israel Highway , is a major electronic toll highway in Israel. The highway was officially dedicated as the Yitzhak Rabin Highway , though this name is not commonly used. It started operating in the early 2000s and is being lengthened as...

 or the Carmel Tunnels

Carmel Tunnels

The Carmel Tunnels are a set of road tunnels in and around Haifa, Israel. The tunnels' purpose is to reduce road congestion in the Haifa area and to provide an alternate route of reaching the eastern and central parts of the city, Haifa Bay and the Krayot area to and from Israel's central coastal...

, is a shekel symbol with a road in the background.

Unicode and input

The symbol has the Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...

 code point . It has been found in Unicode since June 1993, version 1.1.0.

According to the standard Hebrew keyboard (SI 1452) it must be typed as AltGr-A (the letter ש appears on the same key in regular Hebrew mode). It can be typed into Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 on a standard Hebrew keyboard

Hebrew keyboard

A Hebrew keyboard comes in two different keyboard layouts. Most Hebrew keyboards are bilingual having both Hebrew and English, as English letters are necessary for URLs and Email addresses...

 layout by pressing AltGr and 4 (Shift-4 produces the Dollar sign

Dollar sign

The dollar or peso sign is a symbol primarily used to indicate the various peso and dollar units of currency around the world.- Origin :...

). The Shekel sign, however, is not drawn on most keyboards sold in Israel and the sign is rarely used in day-to-day typing. On a non-Hebrew layout the sign can be entered by Holding Alt while pressing 8-3-6-2.On a Ubuntu system it can be entered by holding down ctrl+shift+u, releasing (a u with an underline appears) and then typing the Unicode

Unicode

Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...

 code point 20aa space.

Old Israeli shekel (1980–1985)

The old Israeli shekel, "", in circulation between 1980–1985, had a different symbol, which was officially announced on 18 March 1980. It was a stylized Shin

Shin (letter)

Shin literally means "Sharp" ; It is the twenty-first letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician , Aramaic/Hebrew , and Arabic ....

shaped like a cradle (i.e. rounded and opening upward). Before the introduction of the old shekel in 1980, there was no special symbol for the Israeli currency. This symbol appeared on checks issued by Israeli banks between 1980 and 1985. Quoting prices in new shekels started officially on January 1, 1986, and the old shekel checks remaining unused had to be stamped with The New Shekel symbol over the old symbol.