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Two small circles either side of a diagonal stroke, meaning 'per hundred'.
Also known as: Per cent sign, Percentage symbol
The percent sign expresses a proportion out of one hundred. Its form is generally traced to a contracted writing of the Italian 'per cento'.
Expresses a number as a proportion of one hundred, as in 50%, meaning half.
Contexts: Mathematics
Developed from a contracted handwritten form of the Italian 'per cento', with the abbreviation gradually collapsing into the modern sign.
15th century onward · Contexts: Mathematics
Descends from a written abbreviation rather than from a picture. Italian commercial manuscripts wrote per cento, then contracted it — per 100, then p с̃ and similar forms — and by the seventeenth century the contraction had collapsed into a mark whose two circles and stroke are what remained of the digits and the abbreviation stroke.
Italy · Fifteenth to seventeenth centuries · Contexts: Mathematics, History
Extends by adding zeros: a second lower circle makes per mille, parts per thousand, and a third makes the per-ten-thousand sign. Each zero is a further factor of ten, which makes the family readable without learning it.
Contexts: Mathematics
Related forms that are not treated as separate canonical symbols — see our variant rules.
Turkish and Arabic forms
Written variants in which the stroke and circles are drawn differently, and in Arabic-script typesetting mirrored along with the surrounding text.
A diagonal stroke with a small circle at the upper left and another at the lower right.
The per mille sign adds a third circle.