sp@questor.wimsey.bc.ca (Steve Pershing) (06/28/90)
hardarso@weiss.cs.unc.edu (Kari Hardarson) writes: > I thought that the : # sign was called a 'Hash' mark before I came to > the states. Maybe that's British English? Here in the States, a lot of > my colleagues refer to it as the 'Pound sign', something that I can't > understand since the pound sign is distinctly different. In UK-ASCII > tables, the pound sign usually gets placed where the # is in American > ASCII, that may explain something. Incidentally, in my language > (Icelandic) we refer to the sign as 'The mill'. ; The most creative name I ever saw for the # symbol was defined by Northern Telecom, and as many readers know, it was "octothorpe". The meaning of the word was defined by NT as "an eight-cornered figure". Since there are so many different names for the # symbol around the world, NT wanted to be unique, and indeed they were. I doubt that anyone actually calls it by their name (octothorpe) *anywhere* in the world. Some years ago, after Bell Labs had defined the Touch-Tone dial, the CCITT adopted it and the standard tones generated by it as a de facto standard. (Various branches of the US military use a different tone matrix on similar dialling pads.) The CCITT displayed (in the White Book, I believe), a 12-button Touch-Tone dial with the # symbol appearing more as a slightly stylized square, rather than identical to the #. They then wisely designated that symbol as the "square" symbol, and the key, as the "square key". Since my reading of that definition, I have always referred to it as the "SQUARE KEY", and hardly anyone from anywhere in the world has ever had any trouble figuring out what I was referring to when my computerised answering device asks them to touch it. So folks, why don't we all forget "pound", "number", et alia, and start calling it what the official World Standard is. Nothing like being able to communicate clearly, eh wot? Internet: sp@questor.wimsey.bc.ca | POST: 1027 Davie Street, Box 486 Phones: Voice/FAX: +1 604 682-6659 | Vancouver, British Columbia Data/BBS: +1 604 681-0670 | Canada V6E 4L2 [Moderator's Note: Long-time Digest readers will recall that over a year ago I put out a special issue entitled "Everything You Wanted to Know About Octothropes" ... If I get many more messages on this topic this time, another special issue will be required. PT]