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To: SJS who wrote (5804)	1/31/2000 10:46:00 PM
From: Jeffry K. Smith	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24042

OT, No, but "ampersand" is the name for the '&' character. A devilish mind teaser, eh? Hmmmm, I'll have to look into that. JKS

To: SJS who wrote (5804)	1/31/2000 11:16:00 PM
From: contrarios	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24042

Steve, It's called a hash key although we Americans call it a pound key. I deal with Commonwealth countries a lot and I think we drive them nuts calling it a pound key. dictionary.com hash 1. "#", ASCII code 35. Common names: number sign; pound; pound sign; hash; sharp; crunch; hex; INTERCAL: mesh. Rare: grid; crosshatch; octothorpe; flash; ITU-T: square, pig-pen; tictactoe; scratchmark; thud; thump; splat. The pronunciation of "#" as "pound" is common in the US 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 US 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 US vinnie

To: SJS who wrote (5804)	1/31/2000 11:27:00 PM
From: Master (Hijacked)	Respond to of 24042

# It is the "Tic Tac Toe" key...and that is my final answer, Regis. <g>

To: SJS who wrote (5804)	2/1/2000 2:20:00 AM
From: David C. Burns	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24042

Regis, I'd like to call a friend. Date: Sat, 20 Feb 1999 20:51:38 +0000 From: Michael Fraser <mike.fraser@computing-services.oxford.ac.uk> Subject: Re: 12.0441 'number sign', 'hash sign', but "octothorpe"?? > A colleague reports hearing the "pound sign" on keypads defined as > "octothorpe". OED knows nothing of this, or I have it mis-spelled. Is > this expression known? Who needs the OED when the likes of AltaVista provides us with the largest corpus of language usage... Whilst there seems to be general agreement that octothorp(e) refers to the hash, pound, pound sign, number, number sign, sharp, (garden) fence, crunch, mesh, hex, flash, grid, pig-pen, tictactoe, scratch (mark), (garden) gate, hak, oof, rake, sink, corridor, unequal, punch mark, crosshatch (#) (see taro.poi.net, there is not overall agreement on how this character came to be termed the octothorp in particular. (As an aside, I hadn't realised that it was so common across the Atlantic to refer to # as a pound sign even though it is frequently used in British email as a substitute for the er, pound sign). The page given above which lisst the names simply glosses the term with, 'from Bell System (orig. octalthorpe)'. Further investigation led me to the true story of how the term octothorpe came to be (http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/history/octothorpe.the. real.story), apparently the invention of Don McPherson at Bell Labs: octo- referring the the eight points and -thorpe a curious reference to Jim Thorpe whose olympic medals McPherson was campaigning to have returned from Sweden. However, brodynewmedia.com gives a quote from Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style (1992) at variance with the 'real story'. The etymology of Octothorp lying in octo- for eight and -thorp for field. Thus # represents eight fields clustered around a central square (or village). This last point is mentioned at nwalsh.com which also notes that the # could be a development of the scribal abbreviation for 'numerus'. However, for octothorp the author reproduces an alternative etymology suggesting that the Old English 'thorp' for village derives from the earlier 'treb' for dwelling, and this itself is related to the Latin 'trabs' for beam. Thus octothorp is 'eight beams'. Quadrathorp, the author observes, might have been more appropriate. Hmmm. Finally, # apparently bears some similarity to the Chinese character for 'communal farm' (which I find vaguely appropriate on Humanist) and I suspect that Nicholson Baker has something to say about it in his essay on electronic writing symbols (and their origins) in The Size of Thoughts (1997) but I have neither this nor the OED with me here, only the Web. Michael ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Michael Fraser Email: mike.fraser@oucs.ox.ac.uk Manager, CTI Textual Studies Fax: +44 1865 273 275 Humanities Computing Unit, OUCS Tel: +44 1865 283 343 University of Oxford 13 Banbury Road info.ox.ac.uk Oxford OX2 6NN