100 USD/US$ Over USD/US$ 100

Question

Whilst it's too common in my (and other languages?) to speak (and at times even to write) my currency with construction number + currency name; now, is it, by any means, possible to write/speak that way for the US Dollar?

Check this piece of content

I think the government was paying him and other victims living on their own about 200 rupees ($3) a month at the time. My sister and I weren't awarded any compensation other than money paid to SOS Children's Villages for our support.

This surprised me a bit:

Market volumes gained 131.217 million shares to 351.338 million shares, capitalization swelled by 132.929 billion rupees (1.329 billion U.S. dollars) to 7.004 trillion rupees (70.044 billion U.S. dollars), whereas trading value improved by 6.591 billion rupees (65.914 million U.S. dollars) to 15.726 billion rupees (157.265 million U.S. dollars).

Also, we speak [amount] [USD] but write USD [amount]! Even surprising is, as Jacob says, in written U.S. English, the ¢ (cents) sign goes AFTER the amount!

Shouldn't it be -- USD [amount] over [amount] USD?

Answer 1

When speaking, the rule is [Amount][Currency type].

Example

I have 20 dollars. [CORRECT]

But when we write, we can do it both ways. The above example is one way to write it. The next example is the other way to write it.

I have $20. [CORRECT]

In speech, you will never say:

I have dollars 20. [wrong]

And writing, you will never put:

I have 20$. [wrong]

This is because in English, the sentence structure is [adjective] then [noun]. You will not see [noun] then [adjective] in any normal situation such as this. "20(amount)" is the adjective, "dollars(currency)" is the noun. But when we write it with a symbol, the symbol goes first (example: $amount -> $20).

In short, the symbol for the currency always goes in front of the amount (only used in writing), and the word for the currency always goes after the amount (in writing and speech).

Answer 2

I agree with Danegraphics, but let me add a couple of notes:

If you use the "$" symbol, then it always goes before the amount, e.g. "$20". But if you write out the word "dollars", then you write it like we say it, and it comes after the amount, e.g. "twenty dollars".

If you need to distinguish US dollars from, say, Canadian dollars, it's common to put an abbreviation of the country name before the dollar sign, like "US$ 20" or "CAN$ 20".

As to WHY we put the symbol before the number ... I'm sure there's some historical reason. I've always thought it made no grammatical sense, as that's not how we read it.

For foreign currencies, we generally try to follow the conventions of the country it comes from. I was recently working on a web site that displays amounts in various currencies and we had a table that specified the symbol for each currency and also whether it goes before or after the amount.