Luckily no one remembered to put it in the middle yet, which I assume is only because 50€10 looks cursed.
Exceptionally, the symbol for the Cape Verdean escudo (like the Portuguese escudo, to which it was formerly pegged) is placed in the decimal separator position, as in 2$50.
sweden does something similarly weird. we don't have a currency symbol (unless you count "kr") so the standard way to write a price is "20:-", which used to be "20kr, 0öre", with the colon as the decimal separator and the line added so you couldn't write in another value, but then we switched decimal separator for currency to "," and ":-" just became the symbol for "money".
you even occasionally see abominations like "19,90:-"...
To a large extent yes. The only exception I know is, like @dont_lemmee_down@lemm.ee mentioned, Portugal that used the 100$00 format and now uses the 0,5€ format - which is still the closest to the previous standard without looking horrible.
In spoken language that makes sense to me, but in written materials I find it more helpful to know what unit I should be framing the numeric value I'm about to read in first. Dunno why - maybe it's just what I'm used to, and I could adapt relatively easily if I was forced to.
I personally don't have it that bad but I've similar thoughts about written units. I must admit I do prefer everything working the same and as such think the dollar sign in front is extremely cursed.
I also hate how few people use the ISO 8601 date standard which is super intuitive and machine friendly. And no matter what there is no excuse for the mm.dd.yyyy format.
There was an effort to approach spoken and writen speech.
Before the introduction of the Euro in my country we would speak and write XXXX$XX, meaning X amount, then declare the currency, followed by X of cents.
Nowadays we just state X,X€. So X amount, with X amount of cents, then state the currency.
So, a couple of unlikely things will have to happen for this, but if 1) Britain ever returns to the EU and 2) as a joining condition is forced to adopt the Euro, I can all but guarantee that most people will put the Euro symbol in front where the pound sign used to be, even if expressly told not to. Even those in favour of being in the EU.
Retailers would do whatever they felt like on labels and shelves unless it was enshrined law.
And the penchant for using imperial weights and measures would continue unabated across the lands.
as a joining condition is forced to adopt the Euro
That doesn't happen. The treaties can force a country to join the eurozone once they meet the convergence criteria. But the convergence criteria include being part of ERM II for at least 2 years. Participating in ERM II is not mandatory, so countries can simply choose not to, and thus never meet the criteria for adopting the Euro.
For example, out of the six EU countries currently not in the eurozone, only one is participating in ERM II (Bulgaria).
Edit: and there are always opt-outs too. Denmark for example opted out of the Eurozone.
The they in your sentence, at one point in time, referred to me and my three buddies who worked for Commerce Bank back in the oughts. They left four kids, one of them 18 and the rest 17, in charge of a bank sometimes. I may be personally responsible for commerce bank ceasing to exist.
Proper use of grouping separators (commas in some locales, dots/periods/full-stops in others, although there are some standards that specify spaces instead - which I personally find problematic) might've helped clear up the orientation issue as well.