What should you call the # symbol? | Dictionary.com Blog June 25, 2012 by: Dictionary.com 450 Comments On Facebook and Twitter, you tag your friends with the @ symbol and topics with the #. If you see something that says #WordoftheDay, the tweet or post will concern the Word of the Day in some way. But what do you call the # symbol? Where did it come from? Its myriad names and its appearance are intertwined. The # symbol is commonly called the pound sign, number sign and more recently the hashtag. It is called the pound sign because the symbol comes from the abbreviation for weight, lb , or “libra pondo” literally “pound by weight” in Latin. When writing lb, it was not uncommon for scribes to cross the letters across the top with a line across the top, like a t. See the example below. The phrase “number sign” arose in Britain because “pound sign” could easily be confused with the British currency. The # symbol is sometimes spoken as the word “number” as in the word “number two pencil.” But what is its official name? The octothorpe . What does that mean?

It’s actually a made-up word. It was invented in the same laboratories where the telephone came from. The scientists at Bell Laboratories modified the telephone keypad in the early 1960s and added the # symbol to send instructions to the telephone operating system. Since the # symbol didn’t have a name, the technicians made one up. They knew it should be called “octo-” something because it has eight ends around the edge. But how to make “octo” into a noun? What happened next is not entirely clear. According to one report, Bell Lab employee Don MacPherson named it after the Olympian Jim Thorpe. Another former employee claims it was a nonsense word that is a joke. Another unverifiable report is much more etymologically satisfying. The Old Norse word “thorpe” meant “farm or field”, so octothorpe literally means “eight fields.” The word hash predates these other terms but was not very popular until recently. (Maybe because it reminds us of mediocre diner food.) It first referred to stripes on military jackets as early as 1910. In the 1980s, it came to refer to the # symbol.

Since the ascent of social media, hashtag has become the favored word for the # symbol. Similar symbols appear in many other places. Musicians recognize # as the sharp symbol, denoting a note one half step higher. Copy editors see a symbol meaning “space,” as in “add a space between two sentences.” In computer code, the # symbol means that everything that follows is only comment, not instructions. Do you use the # often? What other characters would you like us to discuss on the the Dictionary.com blog? See Also: Why does the dollar sign have two lines? Find out here . What symbol used to be a part of the alphabet, was removed, but is still used every day? Learn about it here . Does the symbol @ have a name? If not, any suggestions? | Notes and Queries | guardian.co.uk SEMANTIC ENIGMAS Does the symbol @ have a name? If not, any suggestions? IN ISRAEL the @ symbol is often referred to as "strudel". Computer books often refer to @ as the "at sign". Anyone who ever made or cut a strudel would agree th@ "strudel" is @ least as appropri@e a name as "at sign".

Roy Sage (roysage@msn.com). , IN DUTCH it is called apestaart , which means "monkey's tail". Because it looks like a monkey with his tail curled over him. Martin Southwold (martinso@worldonline.nl). , SURELY it's an "ampersat"? Nyk Tarr, Rochdale, Lancs. IN ENGLISH, the symbol is boringly known as "commercial at", but other languages offer more imaginative names. In Swedish, it is called snabel-a , ("a" with an elephant's trunk), or kanelbulle , the Swedish equivalent of the Chelsea bun. In German it is called Klammerraffe , (a clinging monkey) - presumably hanging from a tree by one arm. Dr Gunnel Clark, Wotton-under-Edge, Glos. IN GREEK, it's called a little duck and in Russian a dog. Since animals seem to predominate, could I suggest the British term should be a mad cow rampant? (Professor) Richard Macrory, Tackley, Oxford. IT IS called an "atmark".

Its use in internet addresses has led to the production of a computer intended for accessing the World Wide Web called the Atmark computer. Kit Barritt (Kit.Barritt@ccmail.eu.sony.co.jp) , THE OFFICIAL name is the "at" sign, from the same school of typographer's gobbledegook which gave us "octothorpe" (the #). This naming predates the use of @ by electronic mail systems the world over, and sadly produces many ambiguities when mail addresses are dictated over the phone. If pilots and the police can have special terminologies for clear communication, then I would like to propose an easy, relevant and linguistically distinguishable subtitute for the confusing 'at' naming. The name for @ should be "nerd". This makes my email address, read over the phone, into "cassidys nerd cix dot compulink dot co dot uck". Steve Cassidy (normally in London EC2 but presently bored in Stuttgart) , IN BRAZIL the symbol is known as arroba , which is also an old measure of 15 kilos. Michael Wrigley, Campinas, Brazil.

IN ITALIAN the symbol is known as a chiocciola (snail). Geoffrey Allen, Pavia, Italy. IN FINLAND it's known as a mouse's tail. Stephen Ryan, Dublin (sryan@dit.ie) I heard someone on Radio 4 refer to it as an "e-snail" which I thought was nice. Chris Winchester, London In Hungary, the @ symbol is called "kukatsz", which means little worm. Chris Dalton, Budapest, Hungary The Norwegian call the @ "kroellalfa",meaning curled a. S William Ingebrigtsen, Bergen, Norway In Italian we call it "chiocciolina", which means "small snail". "Chiocciola", as Geoffrey from Pavia suggests above, is much less used. Luca De Piano, Milan, Italy I've always understood that @ originally meant "account" and was regularly used in banking. I seem to remember that it appeared on cheques at one time. It seems a more likely explanation than "at". After all, why would anyone want to abbreviate a two letter word? Keith Mills, Alne, York UK @ abbreviates more than just two letters.

I remember it on signs in shop windows when I was a child in the early 60s e.g. Cabbages @ 3d, and on similarly on bills. It saves you writing 'at' and 'each'. Anne Lane, Greenwich In Czech, it is called "zavinac" which means a rolled pickled herring. Mojmir Pribina, Velka, Moravia I have heard it called "petit escargot" ("little snail") in France. Katherine Ellis, London I've always known it to be called the "short at". Henry Wolny, London The French have a word for it: arobasse. I can't find it in the dictionary but it does seem to have gained widespread acceptance. Quite an achievement in a country where hardly anyone knows (or cares about) the word for "ampersand". Rudiger Scheister, Paris In Spain, we call it "arroba", which also is a measurement of weight, but I can't see the conection.

( 1 arroba = 15 kilos ) Maria, Toledo, Spain We Catalans call the symbol "arrova" from "rova" meaning 1/4 (25%), originally a weight measure, as in Spanish. Looking at most email addresses (my own, for instance, itÂ´s certainly 1 out of 4 items!) Relationship with weight? Not sure... but I personally find it heavy going to find the right key to type it. Joan Diez, Amposta, Catalonia How about calling it "letter a with a curly tail"? Do I win a fiver? Charlie Peterson, York At David Burnfield, Sydney, Australia Most people from Portuguese and Spanish-speaking countries answered that the name given to @ is "arroba" (and similars, like "arova"), the same name of a old weight measure unit. However, many people seem to ignore the history of this incidental coincidence: when the first typewriters started to be exported abroad US and UK, the key to @ had to be given a name.

Since the @ was no known or used for anything on those countries, and since the current weight measure unit, the "arroba" (approximately 14 kilos) had by the time no symbol related to it, the Typewriter manufacturers and importers decided to call it arroba. Thus, for this simple and arbitrary decision, people from many countries started to call @ "arroba". Rodrigo Rey, Sao Paulo, Brazil In Finland, apparently, it is called miukumauku because it looks like a sleeping cat. Andrew, Norwich UK In my country we call it the "cha-cha". Historically this dates back to when dancers used to put character "a" on their back when dancing in competitions. To highlight the "a" it was put in a circle. Jose Luis, London England In POLAND the @ sign is called a "monkey" peter gentle, warsaw poland In Denmark we call it "snabel-a", snabel meaning the trunk of an elephant Stine Pedersen, Skanderborg Denmark Small "a" in circle @ Please can any one let me know what this sign called ~ ? my E-mail address is Bigbook2601@yahoo.com thank you.

Ab, Chicago U.S.A In Jamaica it's known as the block, the swirl depicting the feeling of nausia and dizziness having spent far too much time passing the rizla and herb. Derived from the term 'block-up' or in plain English, stoned. Josiah Mackintosh, Port Antonio Jamaica It's the AT symbol and leave it @ that! :-) Kat, California, USA In Russian, the @ symbol is often called "sabachka", which means puppy. Georgeta Solomitskaya-Lester, Cleveland, USA A local game show here said that the official name of the at-sign is "amphora" taken from the name of a jar they used in the ancient medterranean to measure volume of things they would trade (where the @ symbol was supposedly first used). Tina, Manila, Philippines Printers on this side of the pond referred to it as a "commercial at," just as the ampersand was a "commercial and." Howard Wolff, West Orange, NJ, USA In Japan it's called the atomaaku. Mike O'Connell, Sapporo, Japan If it wasn't just the "at" symbol I'm sure somebody would have told us by now.

My favourite from the foreign versions is the Czech one meaning a rolled pickled herring. Perhaps we could latch onto that one and call it a "rollmop". John Kemplen, Leighton Buzzard, England, UK In American computer science, it is universally referred to as the "at sign", or "at" when reading out a sequence of characters or an email address. In Chinese, it's called a mouse (shu), confusingly enough. Ethan Bradford, US I think it would be nice to call it a Titfer. @ = TITFER) As any cockney Londoner will tell you, a Titfer is an "At" in Cockney Rhyming Slang. Londoners usually drop their aitches and "At" stands for Hat i.e. Hat = Titfer Tat! Leslie Nicholass, Colchester, England The "~" (which somebody wanted to know the name of) is known as a tilde.

Rod Fielding, Bury, UK Andrew from Norwich is right: in Finland @-sing is called (colloquially) miuku-mauku, or, alternatively, miumau, which actually referres to the sound that a cat makes (miaow) and @ thus symbolizes the figure of a cat curled up. Officially it is called Ã¤t-merkki (at sign). Marjut, Helsinki, Finland I call it a squiggle, because it is! A swirl, wiggle of a pen and scribble all in one word. Maybe someone was twirling their pen in circles whilst thinking what to write! Paul Coleman, Oxford, UK I agree with what said before: @ means "at Â£ each" and the fact that we have started using in email addresses does not mean that its name as "commercial at" should be discarded, but for ease and speed of conversation in everyday exchange of email addresses we perhaps should adopt the grammatically correct version of "ampersat" which, from the semantic point of view, means "instead of (at)".

Roberta, London london Growing up while in grammar school; 1960's; my teacher told us it was an abbreviation for "at each" (for)...such as 5@1.00 or 5 for 1.00. Made sense then and still does today! Jay, Atlanta USA @ is an arobasse in French, and it is in the dictionary. alan cowling, Nevez France The french word is arobase. Some are confusing the sign @ with ampersand which is not correct - ampersand is the & sign Marilyn, Mauritius Marilyn is right. I CONFUSED THE @ symbol with the ampersand symbol (&). I suppose the @ symbol is at especially in Email addresses. Kelly, Orlando Florida usa First description of symbol @ is dated century IV, detailing how many "arroba" (weight measurement about 25 pounds) of a freight by seaway from Seville to Rome. Victor, Alsasua, Spain There's an awful lot of opinion on this subject floating about, but nobody seems to be citing any references. The best I can find anywhere online is at Wikipedia (but it's Wikipedia so take it with a pinch of salt!).

According to whoever wrote the article, it's formal name is "commercial at". Rawlyn, UK Of course the symbol @ has a name ... it is alison taylor. Alison Taylor, Moultrie, US In Hungary we call it "kukac" that means in english "worm" :) Peter MÃ¡tÃ©, Budapest Hungary It is ASCII Code 64. Common names: at sign, strudel, rare, each, vortex, whorl, intercal, whirlpool, cyclone, snail, ape, cat, rose, cabbage, amphora. It also is used in email addresses. Ray Tomlinson was designing the first email program. It is derived from the latin preposition "ad" (at). It has been traced back to the Italian Renaissance in a Roman merchantile document signed by Francesco Lapi on 1536-05-04. In Dutch it is apestaartje (little tail), in German affenschwanz (ape tail). The French name is arobase. In Spain and Portugal it denotes a weight of about 25 pounds called arroba and the Italians call it chiocciola (snail). commercial at.

(n.d.). This information is from The Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing. Retrieved April 25, 2008, from Dictionary.com website: at Tamera, Layton USA I think the @ symbol means "at the rate of" hence 3 pencils @ of 10 cents would be 30 cents. Yes, @ means "at the rate of". Jim York, West Monroe, La. USA The @ symbol is correctly referred to as an asperand. My nemonic is: ASP erand. Stuart Lawrence, Oxford UK Just spoke to someone on the phone in Bosnia. They called it 'a crazy'. Kimberly Rentfro, London It's an at mark, which is also used in T-SQL Programming to denote and define parameters and widecard programming. :) Steve Stephan, Jacksonville, FL, United States of America I wrote a book about the history of the @ sign (in Dutch). Let me make some improvements. (Source": from the Dictionary.com). It is derived from the Latin preposition "ad" (at). It is not, it has nothing to do with "ad". It has been traced back to the Italian Renaissance in a Roman merchantile document signed by Francesco Lapi.

But without any real connection, that is to say that there's no prove that the at sign originate from the Italian use. Hans van Keken, Amsterdam, The Netherlands In Bulgarian it's called "kliomba", and also "monkey A"...the formal usage is "at". Alexander Mateev, Sofia, Bulgaria In Soviet Russia, @ symbol names YOU! Vladimir Oraschuck, Moscow, Russia Ampersand is &. By defination @ is the "at symbol". Joe Kennedy, Glover, VT, USA In a far province somewhere in the Philippines, it is a symbol of sexual desire from their ancestors. they believe that when they see the "@" sign, they need to have sex at once in front of people. It's a sign of great respect for them. One time when a "katutubo" (which means native) came in Manila, (a city in the Philippines, he saw a very big billboard with the "@" sign, and what the native did is he grabbed a lady crossing the street and took his clothes off and ruthlessly had sex with the lady. The native was shocked that the people didn't appreciate what he had done and instead, knocked him down and locked him behind bars.

Can Tooten Taio, Northwestern Scrida, Vietnam In Nahuatl it is referred to as the: "O" otztli. In other words, the capital letter "O" pregnant. It is possibly due to the visually apparent little "o" inside the big "O". Waxaklahun, San Jose, California, US Well in Greece we refer to it by the name..papaki(pa-pa-kee) which means little duck although snail,vortex,worm are better matches for the symbol in my opinion... and oh yeah.. it means *AT* and st *AREA* =D Chris Vrizas, Athens, Greece I hate how people are using @ before people's names when addressing them on the internet, because you talk 'to' someone, not 'at' them! Mark, VIRGINIA BEACH USA In Romania it's called "aron" but it doesn't mean something particulary ^_^ Lena Davis, Vaslui, Romania In Greek it's called 'papaki' which means little duck. Someone on my blog suggested recently "alfaki". I like this word very much, I think it's cute :) It means little alpha.

Dora, Cyprus It is auction sign which used for rate and email addressing it is separator between user and provider name in email address raj, Gwalior, India Although I think the Dutch apestaart (monkey's tail) is the best answer, it actually comes from Old English bookkeeping and is short hand for 'AT THE COST OF' the letter a surrounded by the letter c. Christopher, Liverpool, England We use that symbol for our address on the net, don't we? If someone asks you where you will be available or where you live, would you say, 'I live AT xyz'; or 'I live A WITH ELEPHANT'S TRUNK (or whatever is suggested above) xyz'? Gaurang, Ahmedabd India the symbol @ literally means 'at the rate' vyoma, mumbai india My grandmother told me that this symbol is actually called and meant "around" before it was used by the meaning of "at each" which describes the shape of the symbol, it's "a", then "round" it. Ricky Logan, Sydney Australia I like capital 2! Robin, Austin USA In Korea, it is called 'golbangi' for the resemblance to a snail.

Excerpt from Wikipedia: The (@) amphere sign is known by various names in English, including... Personally, I think the 'ampersand' has a much better typographical history and makes more sense. Timothy Berg, Seoul South Korea In Wales w call it the Llanciffgochgochplatricuaticinibaabaa for short. It means a little lambs tail mick, dublin An @ is what you shouldn't be without on Ilkley Moor or you'll get all eaten by worms. Steve, Bristle Currently in Denmark In US it's usage is archaic, means or meant "at" used in sales notation to speed up a notation that refer to pricing example 3 @ 2 for $1. Three items priced at 2 for 1 dollar. Avery, Blythe US In my country the name for @ is similar to The Norwegian name "kroellalfa",meaning curled a. In romanian we say "a rond" which can be translated "round a".

Iulian, Constanta Romania it's the "at" symbol Ben, Mandurah Australia Since I was a small child I have called it "antricat" because it ended in "at" as ampersand ended in "and". I was always going to send it to Websters but never did. Mary Thornton, Vancouver, Washington USA In France, it's called AROBASE stephanie durand, alphinton Australia What can I say? Israel's "strudel " usage is too wonderful. Most people see a lowercase 'a' with most of a circle around it...my people see a slice of European pastry! Jane, Columbia SC In Polish it is "małpa" = monkey. Most things you say in Polish are funny, and that is no exception, when you say: "My email is Paul monkey gmail dot com". Maks, Warsaw Poland @ Is a contraction symbol of the words: At Cost. Harold Sperber, Hypoluxo United States In Armenia we call it "Snik" it comes from Russian "Sabachka". Thank you all for your information.

Lily, Yerevan, Armenia In Russia it also calls "sobaka" ("dog") as a "sobachka" (not "puppy" but "little dog"). But all the times I've heard all say "dog". Artyom Scherbakov, Moscow oblast, Istra district, Dedovsk Russia Some years ago I coined the word "epinota" as a name for the @ sign, from the Greek epi (at) and the Latin nota (sign). Yes, I know that's mixing two root languages, but then we drive around in automobiles and not ipsomobiles. Immanuel Burton, London, UK I like "epinota". I think this should become a universal name for @ sign. In Armenian it is called "Sh-neek" which means a little dog; just a translation of Russian "Sobachka". Leann, LA USA Number Sign # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z NEW RANDOM Number Sign This page is about the meaning, origin and characteristic of the symbol, emblem, seal, sign, logo or flag: Number Sign.

Number sign is a name for the symbol #, which is used for a variety of purposes, including the designation of a number (for example, "#1" stands for "number one"). The symbol is defined in Unicode as U+0023 # number sign (HTML: # as in ASCII). What is the name of the # symbol? | Oxford Dictionaries Home Explore Language questions Questions about symbols What is the name of the # symbol? What is the name of the # symbol? It has several names. The most common is probably hash . In North American English, it's sometimes called the pound sign and used as a symbol for pounds weight: this can be confusing for British people for whom a pound sign is £. It's also known as the number sign in North American English, in contexts such as go to question #2. In a musical context , the symbol is known as a sharp. The picturesque name octothorpe has also been introduced: it's said to have been invented by an employee of Bell Laboratories in the 1960s, in honour of the American athlete Jim Thorpe (with the octo - part deriving from the symbol's eight points).

In the large form in which it appears on telephones it's sometimes called a square. Recently, the hash sign has acquired a new role. On social networking sites such as Twitter, it's attached to keywords or phrases so as to identify messages on a particular topic (e.g. #volcano; #Iceland). These keywords or phrases are known as hashtags . Jet is a shade of which colour? black Puce is a shade of which colour? yellow Hazel is a shade of which colour? brown Aquamarine is a shade of which colour? orange Carnelian is a shade of which colour? blue Amethyst is a shade of which colour? purple Burgundy is a shade of which colour? cream Heliotrope is a shade of which colour? beige Verditer is a shade of which colour? blue Russet is a shade of which colour? grey You scored /10 practise again? Retry Most popular in the world Australia Language Log » The "pound sign" mystery The "pound sign" mystery « previous post | next post » Yesterday, in discussing Kevin Fowler's song Pound Sign , there was some debate about the origin of the term "pound sign" for the symbol #.

I suggested that it all started with the substitution of # for £ on American typewriter keyboards, but others argued that # was a standard symbol for pound(s) avoirdupois. I've heard this theory before, but I expressed skepticism about it because I've never actually seen the symbol used that way. Today, after some further research, I'm still not completely sure. But I've found a new theory, which I think has a better chance to be correct: it's all Emile Baudot's fault. William Safire asked about this usage in his On Language column for 1/20/1991, " MAIL CALL (ALL CAPS) ": … you and I rarely use suite or even apartment number , abbreviated to Apt. No. ; most often, we use the crosshatch symbol for "number," which has come to be known as the pound sign (the origin and etymology of which I seek Lex Irreg help in finding). Others writing about the same time indicate that this usage was unfamiliar to them as well.

Thus Ron Alexander, " Metropolitan Diary ", NYT 6/20/1990: The responses are delivered in a reassuring, synthesized male voice that never hesitates or sneezes or coughs. It says to "push the pound sign after entering the deposit amount." The pound sign, the voice explains, "is to the right of the zero; the asterisk is to the left of the zero." I believe that AT&T used "pound sign" for this symbol from the first introduction of the touch-tone keypad in 1963, but it's clear that in 1990-1991 the term was still new to many Americans. I left AT&T in 1990, and at that point, "touch-tone penetration" (as we used to call it) was still low enough to be an argument for outfitting voice response systems with speech recognition technology, even though that technology was then very expensive and not very robust. But touch-tone penetration (the proportion of households with touch-tone as opposed to rotary phones) started to pick up after 1984, when customers could buy their own phones rather than leasing them from AT&T as part of their service package.

And by 1990 or so, voice response systems were starting to take off, and people throughout the country were forced to learn what a "pound sign" was. Safire reported the results of his query a couple of months laters, in " Hit the Pound Sign ", 3/24/1991. He starts with a fictionalized voice-mail interaction: "Please enter your password," the synthetic-syrupy recorded voice directs, "followed by the pound sign." "When was I born?" is my first internal question. The second, which I asked only once, was: "What and where is the pound sign ?" I always thought the pound sign was the symbol for the British pound sterling, a script capital L with a hyphen through it, a stylized representation of the Latin libra .

(The Roman pound was several ounces lighter than the modern pound; some things stick in my mind, but numbers fade fast.) No; the sign that the recorded Miss Syrup refers to is what some of us remember as the tick-tack-toe sign, or the crosshatch, or the sign of the double-cross, similar to the symbol Charlie Chaplin wore as a parody of the swastika in his 1940 movie, "The Great Dictator." After some more stuff making fun of voice menus, Safire gives some of the things that are not answers: When #, as we shall call it here, is placed before a number, it is called a number sign ; #1 pencils have a softer lead than #2 pencils, and nothing fits into a #10 envelope anymore. When a musician sees it, the meaning is "sharp"; doctors often use it as a symbol for "fracture." When a proofreader uses the #, the meaning is "insert space here": two words incorrectly runtogether are happily separated by a #.

And finally he gives the answer that he's settled on: The origin [of the touch-tone keypad term] may be from the use of # to mean "pound," as in "a 5# bag of sugar," written by someone unhappy with the abbreviation lb. to stand for "pound." (We know that pound is from the Latin libra pondo , "a pound by weight," which accounts for the lb. ; not everybody knows that) […] A more remote possibility is that pound evokes a mashing of the desired button, as one pounds on a door, but I go for the 5#-bag theory. The trouble with this theory, as I observed in my earlier post, is that the evidence for # meaning "pound avoirdupois" is so thin. It's clear that Safire himself had never encountered it, or he wouldn't have needed to ask for help from his readers. I myself have never seen it in a grocery store or a recipe or a newspaper ad — and I've been shopping and cooking for myself since 1963. Lists of abbreviations from the late 19th and early 20th century don't use it: Thus N.A.

Calkins, Manual of object-teaching , New York, Harper & Brothers, 1882: Or Bernard Fantus, A text book on prescription-writing and pharmacy , 1905 ("Second Edition, Thoroughly Revised and Adapted to the Eighth (1905) Edition of the the United States Pharmacopoeia"): That last reference is especially relevant because it uses non-standard typography for several other measures, but gives "pound" as simple "lb." The earliest example that I've been able to find of the symbol # apparently used as shorthand for "pound (as a measure of weight)" is the OED's citation: 1923 W. E. HARNED Typewriting Stud. II. 29/1 Special Signs and Characters..#..Number or pound sign; # 10 (No. 10); 10# (ten pounds). A similar reference can be found in Nancy Lawrence et al., Correlated studies in stenography: the correlation of business correspondence, English, office practice, and shorthand , 1932: But these might literally refer to some rather specialized kind of business shorthand, rather than a general usage.

There's a more helpful example in Milton Kaufman, Radio operator's license Q & A Manual , 1955: Similarly, the number or pound sign (£) cannot be reproduced in transmission and in lieu thereof the sender should use the words NUMBER (or NO), POUND (or LB) or POUNDS (or LBS), as the case may be. This one pretty clearly comes from the equivalence established in (various versions of) the Baudot Code. As the Wikipedia article explains, Baudot invented his original code during 1870 and patented it during 1874. It was a 5-bit code, with equal on and off intervals, which allowed telegraph transmission of the Roman alphabet and punctuation and control signals. It was based on an earlier code developed by Carl Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm Weber in 1834. The code was entered on a keyboard which had just five piano type keys, operated with two fingers of the left hand and three fingers of the right hand.

Once the keys had been pressed they were locked down until mechanical contacts in a distributor unit passed over the sector connected to that particular keyboard, when the keyboard was unlocked ready for the next character to be entered, with an audible click (known as the "cadence signal") to warn the operator. Operators had to maintain a steady rhythm, and the usual speed of operation was 30 words per minute. […] Since it was a five-bit code, 32 symbols could be represented. In order to extend this set, there were two mode symbols, allowing the system to shift into "letters mode" or "figures mode". (The following details are taken from this page , perhaps with some scribal or interpretive errors on my part.) In the version of the code adopted as ITA 1, several of the "figures mode" symbols were left "at the disposal of each administration for its internal service". One of these was 11011, which in the version of Baudot used by the British Post Office was N in letters mode, and £ in figures mode. I believe that in U.S. versions of ITA 1, this was # (though I haven't been able to find a reference to nail this down).

In the version created by Donald Murray in 1901, the five-bit pattern 10111 was the letter X in "letters" mode, but was the pound sign £ in figures mode (that is, after a figures shift sign 11011 had been sent). In America, the Teletype Corporation adopted Murray's system with some changes, one of which was to substitute # for £ as the meaning of 10111 in figures mode. In the ITA 2 five-bit code (in use since 1930 or so), the details are again different, but the relevant correspondences are the same. In letters mode, 10100 is the letter H, but after a figures shift shift 11011 has been sent, it's £ in international versions of the code, and # in American versions — called "pound sign" in both cases.

So I'm quite sure that this is why the engineers at Bell Labs called # "pound sign" — it corresponded to a Baudot code-point that had been used for £ in the UK and # in the U.S., probably since the late 19th century and certainly since the early 20th century. Those guys would have memorized the ITA 2 tables, without any question. This is probably also why typewriter keyboards shared this meaning for shift-3. A few questions remain. 1. When was the Baudot figures-mode correspondence between £ and # first established? 2. When the correspondence was first established, was it essentially random? That is, did some Americans say to themselves, "We don't need that £ symbol, so what should we use that code-point for? How about §? Naah. Well then, what about #? Sure, why not." Or instead, was there already an established usage of # for pound(s) avoirdupois, so that it was a natural pun? My money is on the "random code-point re-use" theory.

And on that view, any sporadic use of # to mean "pound(s) avoirdupois" would be a secondary and derivative effect, not a cause. [By the way, I once spent a week in Denver recording the young woman that Bill Safire called "Miss Syrup". But that's a story for another time.] What does number sign mean? This page provides all possible meanings and translations of the word number sign Wiktionary(0.00 / 0 votes)Rate this definition: number sign(Noun) The character used to represent the word number; the hash sign; also called the pound sign in the US Freebase(0.00 / 0 votes)Rate this definition: Number sign Number sign is a name for the symbol #, which is used for a variety of purposes, including the designation of a number. The symbol is defined in Unicode as U+0023 # number sign. Outside of North America, the symbol is called hash and the corresponding telephone key is called the hash key. In American and Canadian English, the symbol is usually called the pound sign, and the telephone key is called the pound key.

When used in technology, it is often referred to as hash, such as at the beginning of a hash tag: a word or phrase on social networking sites beginning with a #, as in #hashtag. The symbol is easily confused with the musical symbol called sharp. In both symbols, there are two pairs of parallel lines. The key difference is that the number sign has true horizontal strokes while the sharp sign has two slanted parallel lines which must rise from left to right, in order to avoid being confused with the musical staff lines. Both signs may have true vertical lines; however, they are compulsory in the sharp sign, but optional in the number sign depending on typeface or handwriting style. The numerical value of number sign in Chaldean Numerology is: 9 Pythagorean Numerology The History and Usage of Common Symbols | Scribendi.com You are here: > Home > Resources > Advice and Articles > The History and Usage of Common Symbols The History and Usage of Common Symbols Have you ever wondered where the ampersand symbol came from? Or wondered how to use the number sign or the pound sign? We've outlined some common symbols and meanings so you can learn their origins and histories. Let's go!

The Ampersand Symbol (&) What is the ampersand symbol? The ampersand symbol is a logogram; in written language, a logogram is a character that denotes a particular word or phrase. In English, the ampersand is the logogram &, which may look more familiar than the word ampersand. The & symbol represents the conjunction and, which is used to grammatically connect words or phrases. Where did the ampersand symbol come from? The symbol & comes from the first century AD, when scribes wrote in Latin cursive. The ampersand symbol actually comes from the Latin word et, which means and. Linking the letters e and t created the ampersand symbol. Today, the ampersand symbol still signifies the word and. The word ampersand, however, is actually a lot newer than the symbol itself —more than 1,500 years newer. When the ampersand symbol was added to the English alphabet in the early 1800s, reciting the alphabet became tricky, as ending it with and was awkward. So schoolchildren would say, "X, Y, Z, and per se and," since per se means by itself .

Of course, merging these words creates the word ampersand. How do I use the ampersand symbol? Usually, you shouldn't use the ampersand in formal situations, although academic usage depends on the preferred or requested style guide. Ampersands are most commonly seen in business names; in the academic world, you might use an ampersand to join author names in an in-text citation or list of references, such as in APA style. You might also use an ampersand to address a letter or in a screenplay. However, the word and is most commonly preferred. The At Sign (@) What is the at sign? The @ sign, read aloud as at, was originally most often used in accounting to mean "at the rate of." Today, the at sign is most commonly used in electronic communication. You've probably used it for email addresses and in social media to address a specific person's account, which is why the symbol is now universally found on keyboards. Where did the at sign come from? Interestingly, the at sign is known to have been used by monks and was possibly even invented by them to speed up the transcription process (which was, of course, done by hand).

Using the at sign helped them to decrease the number of pen strokes necessary to communicate the same information. It's also likely that the at sign originated from à, which means at in Italian. The at sign was also once used as an abbreviation for amphora . The amphora was a unit of measurement for large terra cotta jars of the same name that were used to ship wine, spices, and grain. The unit later took on a role in commerce to mean at the rate of , where it is still used today. How do I use the at sign? As noted, the at sign is used today in commerce and in electronic communication. It is logically used in email addresses and across social media. It's also used in informal speech to signify the word at, but this should definitely be avoided in formal writing. The Pound Sign (#) What is the pound sign? The pound sign, the number sign, or, more recently, the hashtag are all the same symbol (#). It comes from the Latin abbreviation for weight, lb, standing for libra pondo, which means "pound by weight." Calling it "the number sign" originated in Britain, as the name pound was confused with the British currency (i.e., pounds).

Today, it is often referred to as the hashtag, and it also has different meanings for musicians, proofreaders, and computer coders . Where did the pound sign come from? The official name of the pound sign is the octothorpe, a word invented in factories that manufactured telephones. In the 1960s, the telephone keypad was modified to include the pound sign, and octo was used to refer to the eight ends around the edge of the symbol. The use of thorpe is a little less clear; it could be named after famed American athlete Jim Thorpe, it could be a nonsense word, or it could refer to the Old Norse word "thorpe," which means farm or field. The word hash is actually older than octothorpe. But only recently have hashtags been popularized across social media, especially Twitter, to tag topics of interest on networks to more easily track and find posts on certain topics. According to Benjamin Zimmer , an American linguist and lexicographer, Stowe Boyd was the first to coin the term hashtag in this blog post in which he referred to the use of the hash symbol to tag topics on Twitter. How do I use the pound sign?

Some style guides might allow for the use of the pound sign to denote the word number, but the pound sign is more commonly used in informal contexts. As mentioned above, musicians may use the sign in reading music (as it indicates a sharp), proofreaders might use it to designate the insertion of a space, and computer coders can use it to mark comments or commands in programming language. Clearly, the usage of the pound sign varies; it is still seen on telephone keypads, but you can also use it to mark hashtags on Twitter. Nifty! Conclusion You can't use the symbols &, @, or # in most formal contexts, and most of these symbols and meanings have diverged from their original uses. But the ampersand symbol, at sign, and pound sign are all still in use today, and only time will tell how these symbols and meanings might morph in the future. Related Articles Number Sign - Rules and Examples Number Sign hash (British English) On the keyboard The number sign ( # ) is made on an American keyboard by holding the SHIFT key and pressing the number 3 on the top number line. The number sign can also be inserted into a document by choosing INSERT SYMBOL and selecting the # symbol.

Number Sign In the American English, the # symbol is read as "number" when it comes before a number. We mostly use the number sign in informal writing, such as emails, texts, journal entries and advertisements. Examples: Please pick up your #2 pencils. Please pick up your number two pencils. Tim was #15 in line. Tim was number 15 in line. Please complete #1–10 in your workbook. Please complete numbers 1 through 10 in your workbook. Do not put a space between the number sign and the number. Correct: # 25 Pound Sign In the United States, the # symbol is also called the pound sign or pound when it comes after a number. Pound refers to the unit of weight that is abbreviated as lb. Examples: John cooked 2# of hamburger for supper. John cooked 2 pounds of hamburger for supper. The baby weighs 8.2#. The baby weighs 8 pounds and 2 ounces. I gained 1# during vacation. I gained one pound during vacation. There is no space between the number and the pound sign. Correct: 400 # Pound Key On and American telephone, the # symbol is referred to as the pound key.

The pound key is located on the bottom right of the phone. Usage of the # symbol in British English In the United Kingdom and Ireland, the # symbol on the telephone is usually called the hash. It is never called the pound sign. In the United Kingdom, pound refers to currency. The symbol for the pound is £. In British English, the use of the # symbol as an abbreviation for "number" is rare. In British English, "number" is abbreviated as "no." Examples:

Question: What is the proper term for the # symbol, often referred to as a "number sign", "hash" or "pound sign"?
Answer: Octothorpe