What is this called ---> # - I CAN'T TAKE IT ANY MORE!
Graham Toal
>the confusion caused by hash being used for pounds *WEIGHT* in America
>at some time in the distant past.
Pardon?
Sorry if I sound short-tempered Peter, but I am really sick of this
discussion. For the final time:
1) UK uses a cursive L for Pounds Sterling
2) At some time in the past, UK has put that symbol on its keyboards
above the 3 because we needed our currency symbol. We stole that
keycap slot because the unknown rune there meant nothing to us.
3) The character on shifted-3 has variously returned three different
numerical values: a) the same code as US hash character but only
when using the old 7-bit 'UK variant ASCII'
which actually displayed as a cursive L on screen.
b) a value > 128 in the ISO8859/1 charset meaning
'UK pound sterling'
c) a different value > 128 in the IBM PC code page
All of these are expected to be displayed as a UK Pound Sterling symbol
4) The hash character never existed in Britain until about 25 years
ago when we first started importing US comics for kids - Superman etc.
When we saw it then we had no idea what it meant or what it was called.
We later discovered it was a glyph meaning 'issue number'
5) We finally stopped using UK keyboards and displays, and the hash
character was everywhere on computers. We were told it was called
'hash' in America - this turns out to be less that the whole truth!
However that name stuck and no other is used in Britain, except
jocularly (octothorpe is a joke, folks). [Oh, and BT call it 'square'
or 'gate' in a telephone context]
6) TOTALLY INDEPENDENT of all of this crap, Americans have been using
hash in an entirely different context going *way* back before computers:
They talk about "potatoes, 3#" meaning three pounds WEIGHT of potatoes.
I think this must be an old dying usage because not all Americans
are aware of this.
7) Because of the completely accidental connection between '#weight'
and the #-key being on the same button as the Brits used to steal a
character for our pound sign, vast numbers of Americans now think
that '#' is the British Pounds Sterling sign, and cite that in
justification of calling '#' pound. Since '#' is *NEVER* pound in
the UK, this leads to both confusion and flame-wars.
So, a plea to Americans: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE only insist on calling '#'
'Pound' if you are aware of its history and understand that it is only
ever POUNDS WEIGHT, and are willing to inform those around you of this
every time you use it. If you can't hack all that, pick another name
for it. Like 'hash', which will keep everyone happy.
Please file this everyone. I'm not explaining it again.
I left this group a year ago when subjects were being recycled over a
period of months. Lately we've had people saying 'X' on Monday; someone
follows up on Tuesday saying 'Oh, X reminds me of Y'; on Wednesday we
discuss Y, then on bloody Thusday someone posts with 'Oh! Y reminds
me of X!!!' and to make matters worse, everyone joins in and says exactly
the same things about X they said less than a week ago.
It's all very depressing. I think I'll go find some Real Life for a month
or two before you people drive me nuts again.
G
PS There are two people on this group who are *particularly* bad at this
and appear to have the short-term memory of a gnat. In the interests
of peace I won't name names but will quietly unsub until my sense of
proportion returns, or possibly my sense of humour.
Terry Siederer
Hi there,
Being English people always asked me what is was called. "In music script it's called 'sharp'" I replied, not knowing better! The Dutch called it 'hekje' which means small fence and I heard a Swede call it "brädgård" which means lumberyard or "fyrkant" meaning square and I'm told in Norwegian "grind" which means gate.
Any more variations?
Regards/Hälsningar/Groetjes
Terry Siederer
---
Regards/Hälsningar/Groetjes
Terry Siederer
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Pierre Renault
(think of a fence-in area rather the pound-weight)?
With regards to Terry Siederer's comment, the sharp is not quite the
same as a pound symbol: the pound is two perpendicular pairs of parralel
lines when the sharp is drawn as two right-angled lined meeting.
Like so:
The Sharp: |_ The Pound _|_|_
|_| _|_|_
| | |
Dr Peter Kittel Germany
Ah, nearly same history as in Germany:
>4) The hash character never existed in Britain
Neither here.
>5) We finally stopped using UK keyboards and displays, and the hash
> character was everywhere on computers. We were told it was called
> 'hash' in America - this turns out to be less that the whole truth!
Oh well, and here confusion started at our place. Some with some computer
knowledge use the direct translation of "number sign", others call it
(translated) a "double cross", and others again mix it up with a "Raute"
(now what's that in English, dictionary time: diamond shape; this is
because it was used on telephone pads sometimes as this hash sign,
sometimes as a real diamond shape), and at last it's called (translated)
"gate", because it looks like a gate in a garden fence, funny, eh?.
It's very rare that two Germans use the same word for this in a
conversation, sigh. But we *never* see it as a pound sign, because we
never mixed up our keyboards in a way like the British, and we know the
*real* pound sign, that italic L, which is in turn also used in Germany
for the *weight* pound (of course our pound of 500 g, not those funny
english/american units).
--
Best regards, Dr. Peter Kittel // E-Mail to \\ Only my personal opinions...
Commodore Frankfurt, Germany \X/ pet...@cbmger.de.so.commodore.com
Back from CeBIT (displaying A4000T prototype), anything happened?
Terry Siederer
>With regards to Terry Siederer's comment, the sharp is not quite the
>same as a pound symbol: the pound is two perpendicular pairs of parralel
>lines when the sharp is drawn as two right-angled lined meeting.
>
>Like so:
>
>The Sharp: |_ The Pound _|_|_
> |_| _|_|_
> | | |
>
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Sorry Pierre but that's
a natural (when normally a sharp or flat would have been played)
A flat is like a b.
A pound symbol is derived from the letter L (Latin for pound = libro??) but is more curly!!
Wes Groleau X7574
>Isn't it called a pound symbol in english? Pound, as in "dog pound"
>(think of a fence-in area rather the pound-weight)?
>
>same as a pound symbol: the pound is two perpendicular pairs of parralel
>lines when the sharp is drawn as two right-angled lined meeting.
>
>Like so:
>
>The Sharp: |_ The Pound _|_|_
> |_| _|_|_
> | | |
>
Wrong! You have drawn (approximately) what musicians call a "natural"
Please ask anyone who can read sheet music to show you examples of
"flat", "double-flat", "natural", "sharp", and "double-sharp"
The "pound-sign", "number-sign", and "sharp-sign", except for variations of
font, are the same.
Nick Leverton
>... we never mixed up our keyboards in a way like the British ...
No, of course you didn't replace @, [, \, ], {, |, } and ~ with German
national characters at all, did you :-)
N.B. for readers on German terminals: those were commercial-at,
left-square-bracket, backslash, right-square-bracket, left-brace, pipe,
right-brace and tilde.
Nick
wil...@vax.oxford.ac.uk
> Isn't it called a pound symbol in english? Pound, as in "dog pound"
> (think of a fence-in area rather the pound-weight)?
>
Before there are any more comments on this, *everyone* read Graham Toal's post,
which ought to have reached you before this one of mine.
> With regards to Terry Siederer's comment, the sharp is not quite the
> same as a pound symbol: the pound is two perpendicular pairs of parralel
> lines when the sharp is drawn as two right-angled lined meeting.
>
> Like so:
>
> The Sharp: |_ The Pound _|_|_
> |_| _|_|_
> | | |
*WRONG*
What you've drawn is a natural sign, indicating that the note should not be
sharpened or flattened. The one on the right *is* a sharp sign. I don't know
the detailed history of it, but at one time it was written with all lines at 45
degrees to the perpendicular (roughly). In music now, the standard way of
writing and printing it is to make the cross-lines slope up slightly from left
to right. No doubt Roger can give us all a lesson in the history of musical
notation from neumes to graphic scores.
Oh, and for completeness the flat sign looks rather like a lower-case "b" with
a pointy bottom.
--
Stephen Wilcox | Bear with me, please. I can't think
wil...@vax.oxford.ac.uk | of anything witty at the moment.