The position of codes in pictures determines where those codes will have an effect. For example, if the dollar sign character is placed at the far left of a picture, a dollar sign will be placed at the very left edge of the formatted number. If the dollar sign is separated from the left edge of the picture by at least one underscore, the dollar sign will be shown just to the left of the digits in the formatted number:

This positioning convention also applies to placement of the minus sign for negative numbers:

There are four possible positions for any code character: far left, near left, near right, and far right. The left and right positions are determined by which side of the decimal point the code character is shown on. For formats that do not have a fixed number of decimal places, you can use a # character to separate the left fields from the right. Whether the code is placed in the far or near position is determined by the use of underscores. Most code characters will have their effect determined by which of these four fields they are located in. Here's an example of using the fields to determine precisely where to place parentheses to show negative numbers: