Last year, the government of India sponsored a contest to re-design the symbol for the rupee, and this was the winner. It’s very cool and futuristic and all, but it is also based on the Devanagari alphabet, one of the traditional scripts used in India. Previously, there was no particular symbol for the rupee; it was simply abbreviated as Rs. While we’re pretty familiar with the $, £, €, and ¥, most currencies don’t have well-established symbols like that. Instead, there is a set of standard three-letter abbreviations for every currency, including USD, GBP, EUR JPY, and INR.
Even though the contest winner has been determined, it will take a while for the new symbols to actually filter into use. Typographers and font nerds, as well as the bodies behind ASCII and Unicode will have to develop the necessary typefaces, bitmaps, and what-have-you before it can start showing up in print and on the screen. It took years and millions of dollars to implement the Euro symbol, and the whole “artist formerly known as Prince” nonsense was developed to deal with having to have SOME way to refer to him during that phase. Indeed, there has never been an ASCII or Unicode symbol for his little glyph, and media outlets had to develop unique typeface elements if they wanted to use it in print. I’m guessing that everyone will go on using “Rs” or INR to abbreviate rupee for quite a while to come.
