octothorpe

[Lynne Murphy]

I'd always called it a 'pound sign', but ran into trouble with that early in
the UK.  The pound sign £ for pounds sterling is on the same key on the
keyboard as the pound sign #, and that's one of the major differences btw UK
and US keyboards.  So telling the computer person that I was leaving the
keyboard on the US setting so that I could have the pound sign--well, that was
a bit confusing.

Lynne

Dr M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

phone +44-(0)1273-678844
fax   +44-(0)1273-671320
> From:         Victoria Neufeldt <vneufeldt at M-W.COM>
> Date:         Thu, 29 Jun 2000 15:06:07 -0400
> Subject:      Re: octothorpe
> To:           ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Reply-To:     American Dialect Society <ADS-L at listserv.uga.edu>
>
> I've noticed that "number sign" is what you hear in voicemail instructions
> ("press . . . followed by the number sign")  in Canada -- but I don't know
> if that is true across the country.  Which makes more sense to me too than
> "pound sign", since it is much more commonly used as a number sign.  In
> fact, its use as a sign for pound (meaning weight, not pound Sterling) must
> be pretty well obsolete -- at least I can't recall seeing it, except in a
> historical context.
>
> Victoria
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU]On Behalf
> > Of A. Vine
> > Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2000 2:10 PM
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> > Subject: Re: octothorpe
> >
> >
> > Yes.  I do.  And FWIW, the International Organization for
> > Standardization (ISO)
> > calls it NUMBER SIGN.  Alternate names are: pound sign, hash, crosshatch,
> > octothorpe.  ISO calls @ "COMMERCIAL AT" with no alternate names.
> >
> >
> > "Peter A. McGraw" wrote:
> > >
> > > Didn't anybody but me ever call it the "number sign" (as in #1, #5, #57,
> > > etc.)?
>