Re: When to Use Pound Signs

[Nathan Ho]

On 2016-01-05 20:55, Colin Campbell wrote:
> On 16-01-05 09:47 PM, Andrew Bernard wrote:
> > According to the Unicode Standard 6.2, this is u0023, which is 
> > designated Number Sign, and also known equivalently as:
> >
> > pound sign, hash, crosshatch, octothorpe
> >
> > I have always called it octothorpe, mostly because it is just such a 
> > great word!
>
> I wonder if the spaces delimited by the lines are thorpes? I' also
> carpent for a living, though.

Fun fact -- the term "octothorpe" was completely fabricated and doesn't 
have an etymology. It started out as an in-joke at Bell Labs: 
http://dougkerr.net/Pumpkin/articles/Octatherp.pdf

A lot of young people today call the symbol a "hashtag." Some might 
scoff at this since a hashtag is an application of a hash and not the 
symbol itself, but hey, metonymy is metonymy.

Nathan