throop@aurs01.UUCP (Wayne Throop) (06/01/91)
Archive-name: hackers/words/jargon-file/1991-05-30 Archive-directory: mc.lcs.mit.edu:/pub/jargon/ [18.26.0.179] Original-posting-by: throop@aurs01.UUCP (Wayne Throop) Original-subject: Re: Name that character! Reposted-by: emv@msen.com (Edward Vielmetti, MSEN) > Please refer to _The_Jargon_File_. I'm appending the jargon file entry on "ASCII" to this posting. It answers many of the questions raised in this thread. > I think that the Jargon File is available on prep.ai.mit.edu, although > I'm not sure that that is the latest revision. The jargon file was posted to alt.folklore.computers and comp.misc. If it had existed at that time, comp.society.folklore would have been used instead of comp.misc (if I remember right). The version on uunet is listed as /usr/spool/ftp/pub: -rw-r--r-- 1 revell 399569 Mar 24 12:17 jargon2.8.2.Z A file that just *might* be the "jargon file classic" also seems to be on uunet (though why in a "gnu" subdirectory is unclear): /usr/spool/ftp/gnu: -rw-rw-r-- 1 root 43247 Apr 11 1990 jargon.text.Z Also, contact info from the jargon file itself: Please email all additions, corrections and correspondence relating to the jargon file to jargon@thyrsus.com (UUCP-only sites without connections to an autorouting smart site can use ...!uunet!snark!jargon). ----------------------------------------- ASCII:: [American Standard Code for Information Interchange] /as'kee/ n. The predominant character set encoding of present-day computers. Uses 7 bits for each character, whereas most earlier codes (including one version of ASCII) used fewer. This change allowed the inclusion of lowercase letters, a major {win} --- but it did not provide for accented letters or any other letterforms not used in English (such as the German sharp-S and the ae-ligature which is a letter in, for example, Norwegian). It could be worse, though. It could be much worse. See {{EBCDIC}} to understand how. Computers are much less flexible and pickier about spelling than humans; thus, hackers need to be very precise when talking about characters, and have developed a considerable amount of verbal shorthand for talking about characters. Every character has one or more names; some formal, some concise, some silly. Common jargon names for ASCII characters are collected here. See also individual entries for {bang}, {excl}, {open}, {ques}, {semi}, {shriek}, {splat}, {twiddle}, and {Yu-Shiang Whole Fish}. This list derives from revision 2.2 of the USENET ASCII pronunciation guide. Single characters are listed in ASCII order; character pairs are sorted in by first member. For each character, common names are given in rough order of popularity followed by names which are reported but rarely seen; official ANSI/CCITT names are parenthesized. Square brackets mark the particularly silly names introduced by {INTERCAL}. ! Common: {bang}, pling, excl, shriek, (exclamation mark). Rare: factorial, exclam, smash, cuss, boing, yell, wow, hey, wham, [spot-spark], soldier. " Common: double quote, quote. Rare: literal mark, double-glitch, (quotation marks), (dieresis), dirk, [rabbit-ears]. # Common: (number sign), pound, pound sign, hash, sharp, {crunch}, hex, [mesh], octothorpe. Rare: flash, crosshatch, grid, pig-pen, tictactoe, scratchmark, thud, thump, {splat}. $ Common: dollar, (dollar sign). Rare: currency symbol, buck, cash, string (from BASIC), escape (when used as the echo of ASCII ESC), ding, cache, [big money]. % Common: percent, (percent sign), mod, grapes. Rare: [double-oh-seven]. & Common: (ampersand), amper, and. Rare: address (from C), reference (from C++), andpersand, bitand, background (from `sh(1)'), pretzel, amp. [INTERCAL called this `ampersand'; what could be sillier?] ' Common: single quote, quote, (apostrophe). Rare: prime, glitch, tick, irk, pop, [spark], (closing single quotation mark), (acute accent). () Common: left/right paren, left/right parenthesis, left/right, paren/thesis, open/close paren, open/close, open/close parenthesis, left/right banana. Rare: lparen/rparen, so/already, [wax/wane], (opening/closing parenthesis), left/right ear, parenthisey/unparenthisey, open/close round bracket. * Common: star, {splat}, (asterisk). Rare: wildcard, gear, dingle, mult, spider, aster, times, twinkle, glob (see {glob}), {Nathan Hale}. [INTERCAL called this `splat'] + Common: (plus), add. Rare: cross, [intersection]. , Common: (comma). Rare: (cedilla), [tail]. - Common: dash, (hyphen), (minus). Rare: [worm], option, dak, bithorpe. . Common: dot, point, (period), (decimal point). Rare: radix point, full stop, [spot]. / Common: slash, stroke, (slant), forward slash. Rare: diagonal, solidus, over, slak, virgule, [slat]. : Common: (colon). Rare: [two-spot]. ; Common: (semicolon), semi. Rare: weenie, [hybrid]. <> Common: (less/greater than), left/right angle bracket, bra/ket, left/right broket. Rare: from/{into,towards}, read from/write to, suck/blow, comes-from/gozinta, in/out, crunch/zap (all from UNIX), [angle/right angle]. = Common: (equals), gets, takes. Rare: quadrathorpe, [half-mesh]. ? Common: query, (question mark), {ques}. Rare: whatmark, [what], wildchar, huh, hook, buttonhook, hunchback. @ Common: at sign, at, strudel. Rare: each, vortex, whorl, [whirlpool], cyclone, snail, ape, cat, rose, cabbage, (commercial at). V Rare: vee, [book]. [] Common: left/right square bracket, (opening/closing bracket), bracket/unbracket, left/right bracket. Rare: square/unsquare, [U turn/U turn back]. \ Common: backslash, escape (from C/UNIX), reverse slash, slosh, backslant, backwhack. Rare: bash, (reverse slant), reversed virgule, [backslat]. ^ Common: hat, control, uparrow, caret, (circumflex). Rare: chevron, [shark (or shark-fin)], to the (`to the power of'), fang. _ Common: (underline), underscore, underbar, under. Rare: score, backarrow (from the ASCII-1963 graphic), [flatworm]. ` Common: backquote, left quote, left single quote, open quote, (grave accent), grave. Rare: backprime, [backspark], unapostrophe, birk, blugle, back tick, back glitch, push, (opening single quotation mark), quasiquote. {} Common: open/close brace, left/right brace, left/right squiggly, left/right squiggly bracket/brace, left/right curly bracket/brace, (opening/closing brace). Rare: brace/unbrace, left/right squirrelly, curly/uncurly, leftit/rytit, [embrace/bracelet]. | Common: bar, or, or-bar, v-bar, pipe, vertical bar. Rare: (vertical line), gozinta, thru, pipesinta (last three ones from UNIX), [spike]. ~ Common: (tilde), squiggle, {twiddle}, not. Rare: approx, wiggle, swung dash, enyay, [sqiggle (sic)]. The pronunciation of `#' as `pound' is common in the U.S. but a bad idea; {{Commonwealth Hackish}} has its own rather more apposite use of `pound sign' (confusingly, on British keyboards the pound graphic happens to replace `#'; thus Britishers sometimes call `#' on a US-ASCII keyboard `pound', compounding the American error). The U.S. usage derives from an old-fashioned commercial practice of using a `#' suffix to tag pound weights on bills of lading. The character is usually pronounced `hash' outside the U.S. Also note that the `swung dash' or `approximation' sign is not quite the same as tilde in typeset material but the ASCII tilde serves for both (compare {angle brackets}). Some other common usages cause odd overlaps. The `#', `$', `>', and `&' chars, for example, are all pronounced "hex" in different communities because various assemblers use them as a prefix tag for hexadecimal constants (in particular, `$' in the 6502 world, `>' at Texas Instruments, and `&' on the Sinclair and some other Z80 machines). The inability of ASCII text to correctly represent any of the world's other major languages makes the designers' choice of 7 bits look more and more like a serious {misfeature} as the use of international networks continues to increase (see {software rot}). Hardware and software from the US still tends to embody the assumption that ASCII is the *universal* character set; this is a now a major irritant to people who want to use a character set suited to their own language. Wayne Throop ...!mcnc!aurgate!throop -- comp.archives file verification mc.lcs.mit.edu total 416 -rw-r--r-- 1 ftp 399569 Mar 24 12:17 jargon2.8.2.Z -rw-r--r-- 1 ftp 10427 Mar 23 17:40 DIFF281-282 -rw-r--r-- 1 ftp 4447 Mar 2 11:41 READ.ME.271 found jargon-file ok mc.lcs.mit.edu:/pub/jargon/