OK, this just bugs me because it is so obvious.
$ is a symbol meaning “dollar(s).”
“Dollars” is a word meaning “dollars.”
Use just one, not both, or we get redundancy.
I just ran into the problem in Art News online:
HERE’S HOW PETER LIK PRICED THAT $6.5 M. PHOTOGRAPH
BY Dan Duray POSTED 02/23/15
“…Peter ultimately came back and said that the $6.5, $2.4, and $1.1. million dollars was how he wanted to set up the pricing structure.”
Do they have a copy editor?
I bought my first car in 1969. It was a 1958 Volkswagen bug. Extremely basic. No radio. Slow heater. And no gas gauge (you kicked in a reserve tank with a lever on the floor!).
As I recall, the normal gas price back then hovered around 33 cents/gallon. Using an online inflation calculator, nowadays that would be $2.06/gallon — just about where we are now.
During the oil embargo of 1973 the price jumped to 50 cents/gallon, or around $2.20 for today.
And around 1980 the price hit a dollar per gallon, or about $2.80 per gallon in today’s money.
So, gas is back to the price from 45 years ago. Fill ‘er up!
Paul Sutinen 