Re: Technical name for the #?

[Geoff Lane <geoff -at- GJCTECH -dot- FORCE9 -dot- NET>]

Jon Beckton wrote:

>>Good morning,
Re the #, alt-usage-english-FAQ, mentioned on the Techwhirl Resources page,
has this to say:
[huge snip]<<
---

Jon, thanks for the reference.  However, I guess that an american wrote it
because it doesn't reflect things on my side of the Atlantic<g>.

>> "pound (sign)", referring to weight, as in "a 5# bag of potatoes".
Although use of this sign to denote weight has declined, "pound" is the most
widely used name for it in the U.S.  But it confuses people who expect that
term to mean the symbol for sterling currency (located on many British
keyboards in the same place as "#" is found on U.S. keyboards).<<
---

I've never seen '#' used to represent weight.  Here in UK, we use "lb.", as
in "a 5 lb. bag of potatoes".  For years I've laboured under the impression
that some americans thought '#' was the UK symbol of currency!


>>"Number sign", adopted by ANSI/CCITT, is unambiguous [snip]<<
---

Hmmm... to me, the 'number sign' is the typographical equivalent of 'No.' --
so the term 'number sign' is ambiguous.  From this thread, I don't think
that there's an internationally acceptable term for '#'.  However, this
shouldn't surprise because there are so many other differences between US
and UK terms.  Other examples are the pint (1 UK pint = 1.033 US dry pints
or 1.2 US liquid pints), and the billion (1 UK billion = 1,000 US billions).
At least, we have the same sized pound (weight) <g>.

I think that we need to localise ;(

Geoff Lane
Cornwall, UK
geoff -at- gjctech -dot- force9 -dot- net

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