knudsen (12/09/82)
Since my gradschool days, I'be referred to '!' as "cuss-mark" or just "cuss." I always call '#' "sharp" and have never figured out where the "pound" notion came from, except some civil engineers do use # for lb. It may be what users of American terminals use for British money, since HP international terminals put the 'L' symbol where the # would go. I also call a single quote an "irk" (Victor Borge, plus they are very irksome when left out of programs). So a double quote iss a "dirk" and a reverse quote a "birk." I guess UNIX users call '|' a pipe; some of us call < and > "suck" and "blow" (as in "blow the output into foo.lst"). The best one tho, is what my best friend & I came up with for LISP back at CMU. When reading LISP aloud, always pronounce '(' as "SO" and ')' as ALREADY. So CONS A and B, already! mike k
mark (12/09/82)
I am enclosing my complete list. Additions are invited.
! ball-bat, bang, shriek, excl, exclamation point, smash, cuss
" Quote, double quote, dirk
# sharp, pound, Number sign, tictactoe, scratchmark, Octothorp
(the official Bell System name for the # on your Touch-Tone dial)
$ Currency symbol, Buck, Dollar, Dollar Sign,String (from BASIC),
escape (from TOPS-10 where the real escape echos as $).
% Percent
& Ampersand, and, amper
' Apostrophe, prime, tick, quote, single quote, irk
() open/close, parenthesis, paren/thesis, ears, so/already
* star, asterisk, splat, gear. (what does TPC call this on your phone?)
+ Plus
, Comma
- Dash, Hyphen, Minus
. Dot, Period, Point, Decimal, Radix point.
/ Virgule, Slash, Stroke, Slant, Diagonal
: Colon
; Semicolon, Semi
<> angle brackets, brokets, less than/greater than, crunch/zap, /angle,
suck/blow
= Equal sign, equals
? Question mark, Ques
@ At sign, At, Each, At each
[] brackets, square brackets, bra/ket
\ Backslash, Backslant, Reversed virgules, escape (from Unix systems
where things are quoted ("escaped") with \.
^ Circumflex, Hat, Up arrow (from old ASCII)
_ Underscore, underline, underbar, under, score, backarrow (old ASCII)
` Grave accent, backquote, backprime, blugle, birk
{} brace, curly, curly brace, curly bracket
| Vertical bar, pipe, or
~ squiggle, tilde, wiggle, Swung dash (that's what your friendly
lexicographer calls it)
lepreau (12/10/82)
Ahh, don't forget that ~ is also known as "twiddle" (at least in the Utah hinterlands).
smk (12/10/82)
Around here, ~ is known as wiggly.
russell (12/10/82)
Try hash for the # symbol. This is the term used by English speaking French Software engineers. The () are (albeit confusingly) known in Britain as brackets. Russell Cairns
mjb (12/10/82)
How about "pop" for ' and "double pops" for " (although I've never heard of ` referred to as "backpop").
meyerson (12/11/82)
Lately, around BTL-IH(IX), ~ has been popularly known as squiggle.
heliotis (12/13/82)
I had a friend at Xerox who called '~' a "man(y)ana".
dwl (12/15/82)
At most Data General sites, ? is called hook (probably because it looks like one) and ! is called pling (probably because it looks like one). -Dave Levenson -BTL Holmdel
steveb (12/17/82)
Left out ^ caret