Money Government People Fake Bill Make Difficult Changing

The "federal," or national, government in the U.S. tries to prevent people from "counterfeiting," or making fake money. Counterfeiting is a serious crime. However, because people still try to make fake money, the government does several things to try to make it more difficult for people to counterfeit and also for people to "detect," or identify, fake money when it is used.

One thing the U.S. government has done is to print money using special paper and "ink," or the color liquid used to write or print. Recently, the government has added different colors to some of the new bills to make it harder to fake. For example, some bills, like the new $20's, have "shifting ink," which means that when you look at the bill, you will see different colors depending on which way you are holding the bill.

There are also designs that are added in a certain style and certain ink that is difficult to put onto fake bills. Each type of bill also has different symbols that stand for the United States, and different words on the bills are "microprinted," or printed in very small words, which are difficult to fake. If you are not sure if a bill is real, hold it up to light. Real bills greater than $1 have a "watermark," or an image, on the front right (or back left) of the bill that you can see only when you hold the bill up to the light.