Re: Technical name for the #?

[Mark Baker <mbaker -at- OMNIMARK -dot- COM>]

Judyth Mermelstein

>As an old-fogey editor, I say "If something has a name, use it." It will
>always be an octothorpe to me. I do call it a "number sign" when dealing
with
>children and the elderly, but "pound sign" sets my teeth on edge. "Gridlet"
>is cute but, like the other suggestions, surely unnecesary. The
>trisyllabically challenged can just think "octopus" and they'll do fine.


I swore I was going to stay out of this one but...

We have to make a distinction between the glyph and the symbol the glyph
expresses. Many glyphs express more than one symbol. The glyph "-" for
instance can express three different symbols; "minus" as in "4-2=2",
"hyphen" as in "on-demand", and "negative" as in "-34". No one gets upset
about these different names for "-" or asks what the correct name of "-" is.

The glyph "#" can express several different symbols. It can be "number" as
in "#12". In the absence of the normal glyph for pound it can be "pound"as
in "#12 sterling". In the OmniMark language, like many other programming
languages, "#" is used in a number of special ways and is called "hash".

I have no idea if "octothorp" is or is not the correct name for the glyph,
but, except in an abstruse discussion of typography, you should not be
naming the glyph at all, but the symbol. It is therefore quite correct to
call "#" "hash" where it is a hash symbol, "pound" where it is a pound
symbol, "number sign" where it is a number sign symbol, and so on.

---
Mark Baker
Manager, Technical Communication
OmniMark Technologies Corporation
1400 Blair Place
Gloucester, Ontario
Canada, K1J 9B8
Phone: 613-745-4242
Fax: 613-745-5560
Email mbaker -at- omnimark -dot- com
Web: http://www.omnimark.com


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