Template talk:Swiss franc/doc

The official currency symbol of Switzerland

According the official writing instruction by the swiss federal Chancellery the symbol for the Swiss franc is always CHF, not Fr., or even SFr., and it is prepositioned with a space between it and the value:

"Always use the international currency codes (ISO 4217, see e.g. http://www.xe.com/iso4217.php), placing them before the number. In particular, EUR for euros and CHF for Swiss francs. ...Anything resembling Sfr. 20.-- in the source text should be written thus: CHF 20."

See chapter 8. Currency on page 33 in "Style Guides for English-language translators" (PDF) (official site). Berne, Switzerland: Federal Chancellery. 20 September 2017. Retrieved 2019-07-03.

Not quite. That is an internal style guide for use by the Swiss Chancellery when it is writing documents for its own use. It is not a standard meant for the general population of Switzerland.

According to WP:BRD, the article should be left in its original state until the discussion has been completed on the talk page. Stepho talk 22:30, 4 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Yes and no. Yes, it is only a style guide due to the two facts that, firstly, English is not an official language, and secondly, any language directions by the Chancellery is always only an official proposal, since the Confedration does simply not have the legal authority to define languages, not even the national ones.

No, since any serious publisher (newspapers, television, editor, publishing house, ...), independent of what language, follows (voluntarily) these "style guides". If they don't, they are just not important enough and/or not serious enough. Or they ignorantly don't simply care.

In the end it is a de-facto standard like many things in Switzerland (e.g. it is teached exactely that way in primary school), since all publications by the Swiss Confederation will follow these writing instructions, even the school books – therefore these writing instructions are publicly available.

"~~for its own use~~". That's incorrect, they are defnitely meant for any official and/or public publication – you can easily check the website admin.ch .

And yes, they are therefore also meant for anybody in or outside Switzerland. That's just a social fact. -- ZH8000 (talk) 23:00, 4 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I spent some time comparing various Swiss news sites. I found a few that had Fr or Sfr but the vast majority had CHF. Therefore I rescind my objections. Stepho talk 12:04, 5 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your work and concerns. Then I will revert to my last edits. – BTW: the "symbols" SFr. (de) and fr.sv. (fr, it, rm) are outdated more or less since the introduction of the euro in 2002 (the Swiss franc was left as the only franc). -- ZH8000 (talk) 13:30, 5 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

No problem. My last visit was in 1998, so I'm a bit outdated myself. Stepho talk 13:36, 5 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]