Number sign

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Template:Short description Template:Distinguish Template:Infobox symbol

The symbol Template:Char is known variously in English-speaking regions as the number sign,[1] hash,[2] or pound sign.[3] The symbol has historically been used for a wide range of purposes including the designation of an ordinal number and as a ligatured abbreviation for pounds avoirdupois – having been derived from the now-rare Template:Char.[4]

Since 2007, widespread usage of the symbol to introduce metadata tags on social media platforms has led to such tags being known as "hashtags",[5] and from that, the symbol itself is sometimes called a hashtag.[6]

The symbol is distinguished from similar symbols by its combination of level horizontal strokes and right-tilting vertical strokes.

History

A stylized version of the abbreviation for libra pondo ("pound weight")
The abbreviation written by Isaac Newton, showing the evolution from "Template:Not a typo" toward "#"

It is believed that the symbol traces its origins to the symbol Template:Char,Template:Efn an abbreviation of the Roman term libra pondo, which translates as "pound weight".[7][8] The abbreviation "lb" was printed as a dedicated ligature including a horizontal line across (which indicated abbreviation).[9][8] Ultimately, the symbol was reduced for clarity as an overlay of two horizontal strokes "=" across two slash-like strokes "//".[8]

The symbol is described as the "number" character in an 1853 treatise on bookkeeping,[10] and its double meaning is described in a bookkeeping text from 1880.[11] The instruction manual of the Blickensderfer model 5 typewriter (Template:Circa) appears to refer to the symbol as the "number mark".[12] Some early-20th-century U.S. sources refer to it as the "number sign",[13] although this could also refer to the numero sign (Template:Not a typo).[14] A 1917 manual distinguishes between two uses of the sign: "number (written before a figure)" and "pounds (written after a figure)".[15] The use of the phrase "pound sign" to refer to this symbol is found from 1932 in U.S. usage.[16] The term hash sign is found in South African writings from the late 1960s[17] and from other non-North-American sources in the 1970s.Template:Citation needed

For mechanical devices, the symbol appeared on the keyboard of the Remington Standard typewriter (Template:Circa).[18] It appeared in many of the early teleprinter codes and from there was copied to ASCII, which made it available on computers and thus caused many more uses to be found for the character. The symbol was introduced on the bottom right button of touch-tone keypads in 1968, but that button was not extensively used until the advent of large-scale voicemail (PBX systems, etc.) in the early 1980s.[4]

One of the uses in computers was to label the following text as having a different interpretation (such as a command or a comment) from the rest of the text. It was adopted for use within internet relay chat (IRC) networks circa 1988 to label groups and topics.[19] This usage inspired Chris Messina to propose a similar system to be used on Twitter to tag topics of interest on the microblogging network;[20][21] this became known as a hashtag. Although used initially and most popularly on Twitter, hashtag use has extended to other social media sites.[22] Template:Anchor

Names

Number sign

"Number sign" is the name chosen by the Unicode Consortium. Most common in Canada[23] and the northeastern United States.Template:Citation needed American telephone equipment companies which serve Canadian callers often have an option in their programming to denote Canadian English, which in turn instructs the system to say number sign to callers instead of pound.[24]

Pound sign or pound

In the United States, the "#" key on a phone is commonly referred to as the pound sign, pound key, or simply pound. Dialing instructions to an extension such as #77, for example, can be read as "pound seven seven".[25] This name is rarely used outside the United States, where the term pound sign is understood to mean the currency symbol £.

Hash, hash mark, hashmark

In the United Kingdom,[26] Australia,[27] and some other countries,Template:Citation needed it is generally called a "hash" (probably from "hatch", referring to cross-hatching[28]).
Programmers also use this term; for instance Template:Code is "hash, bang" or "shebang".

Hashtag

Derived from the previous, the word "hashtag" is often used when reading social media messages aloud, indicating the start of a hashtag. For instance, the text "#foo" is often read out loud as "hashtag foo" (as opposed to "hash foo"). This leads to the common belief that the symbol itself is called hashtag.[6] Twitter documentation refers to it as "the hashtag symbol".[29]

Hex

"Hex" is commonly used in Singapore and Malaysia, as spoken by many recorded telephone directory-assistance menus: "Please enter your phone number followed by the 'hex' key". The term "hex" is discouraged in Singapore in favour of "hash". In Singapore, a hash is also called "hex" in apartment addresses, where it precedes the floor number.[30][31]

Template:Vanchor, octothorpe, octathorp, octatherp

Most scholars believe the word was invented by workers at the Bell Telephone Laboratories by 1968,[32] who needed a word for the symbol on the telephone keypad. Don MacPherson is said to have created the word by combining octo and the last name of Jim Thorpe, an Olympic medalist.[33] Howard Eby and Lauren Asplund claim to have invented the word as a joke in 1964, combining octo with the syllable therp which, because of the "th" digraph, was hard to pronounce in different languages.[34] The Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories, 1991, has a long article that is consistent with Doug Kerr's essay,[34] which says "octotherp" was the original spelling, and that the word arose in the 1960s among telephone engineers as a joke. Other hypotheses for the origin of the word include the last name of James Oglethorpe[35] or using the Old English word for village, thorp, because the symbol looks like a village surrounded by eight fields.[36][37] The word was popularized within and outside Bell Labs.[38] The first appearance of "octothorp" in a US patent is in a 1973 filing. This patent also refers to the six-pointed asterisk (✻) used on telephone buttons as a "sextile".[39]

Sharp

Use of the name "sharp" is due to the symbol's resemblance to Template:Unichar. The same derivation is seen in the name of the Microsoft programming languages C#, J# and F#. Microsoft says that the name C# is pronounced 'see sharp'."[40] According to the ECMA-334 C# Language Specification, the name of the language is written "C#" ("Template:Resize (U+0043) followed by the Template:Resize # (U+0023)") and pronounced "C Sharp".[41]

Square

Detail of a telephone keypad displaying the Viewdata square
On telephones, the International Telecommunication Union specification ITU-T E.161 3.2.2 states: "The symbol may be referred to as the square or the most commonly used equivalent term in other languages."[42] Formally, this is not a number sign but rather another character, Template:Unichar. The real or virtual keypads on almost all modern telephones use the simple Template:Code instead, as does most documentation.Template:Cn

Other

Names that may be seen include:[4][43]Template:Better source needed crosshatch, crunch, fence, flash, garden fence, garden gate, gate, grid, hak, mesh, oof, pig-pen, punch mark, rake, score, scratch, scratch mark, tic-tac-toe, and unequal.

Usage

When Template:Angbr prefixes a number, it is read as "number". "A #2 pencil", for example, indicates "a number-two pencil". The abbreviations Template:Notatypo and Template:Notatypo are used commonly and interchangeably. The use of Template:Angbr as an abbreviation for "number" is common in informal writing, but use in print is rare.[44] Where Americans might write "Symphony #5", British and Irish people usually write "Symphony No. 5".Template:Cn

When Template:Angbr is after a number, it is read as "pound" or "pounds", meaning the unit of weight. The text "5# bag of flour" would mean "five-pound bag of flour". The abbreviations "lb." and "Template:Not a typo" are used commonly and interchangeably. This usage is rare outside North America, where "lb" or "lbs" is used.

Template:Angbr is not a replacement for the pound sign Template:Angbr, but British typewriters and keyboards have a Template:Keypress key where American keyboards have a Template:Keypress key.[45] Many early computer and teleprinter codes (such as BS 4730 (the UK national variant of the ISO/IEC 646 character set) substituted "£" for "#" to make the British versions, thus it was common for the same binary code to display as Template:Code on US equipment and Template:Code on British equipment ("$" was not substituted to avoid confusing dollars and pounds in financial communications).

Mathematics

Computing

Other uses

  • Algebraic notation for chess: A hash after a move denotes checkmate.
  • American Sign Language transcription: The hash prefixing an all-caps word identifies a lexicalized fingerspelled sign, having some sort of blends or letter drops. All-caps words without the prefix are used for standard English words that are fingerspelled in their entirety.[54]
  • Copy writing and copy editing: Technical writers in press releases often use three number signs, Template:Char directly above the boilerplate or underneath the body copy, indicating to media that there is no further copy to come.[55]
  • Footnote symbols (or endnote symbols): Due to ready availability in many fonts and directly on computer keyboards, "#" and other symbols (such as the caret) have in recent years begun to be occasionally used in catalogues and reports in place of more traditional symbols (esp. dagger, double-dagger, pilcrow).
  • Linguistic phonology: Template:Char denotes a word boundary. For instance, Template:Code means that Template:Char becomes Template:Char when it is the last segment in a word (i.e. when it appears before a word boundary).
  • Linguistic syntax: A hash before an example sentence denotes that the sentence is semantically ill-formed, though grammatically well-formed. For instance, "#The toothbrush is pregnant" is a grammatically correct sentence, but the meaning is odd.[56][57]
  • Medical prescription drug delimiter: In some countries, such as Norway or Poland, Template:Char is used as a delimiter between different drugs on medical prescriptions.
  • Medical shorthand: The hash is often used to indicate a bone fracture.[58] For example, "#NOF" is often used for "fractured neck of femur". In radiotherapy, a full dose of radiation is divided into smaller doses or 'fractions'. These are given the shorthand Template:Char to denote either the number of treatments in a prescription (e.g. 60Gy in 30#), or the fraction number (#9 of 25).
  • As a proofreading mark, to indicate that a space should be inserted.[59]
  • Publishing: When submitting a science fiction manuscript for publication, a number sign on a line by itself (indented or centered) indicates a section break in the text.[60]
  • Scrabble: Putting a number sign after a word indicates that the word is found in the British word lists, but not the North American lists.[61]
  • Teletext and DVB subtitles (in the UK and Ireland): The hash symbol, resembling music notation's sharp sign, is used to mark text that is either sung by a character or heard in background music, e.g. Template:Mono

Unicode

The number sign was assigned code 35 (hex 0x23) in ASCII where it was inherited by many character sets. In EBCDIC it is often at 0x7B or 0xEC.

Unicode characters with "number sign" in their names:

Additionally, a Unicode named sequence Template:Resize is defined for the grapheme cluster Template:Code (#️⃣).[62]

On keyboards

On the standard US keyboard layout, the Template:Char symbol is Template:Keypress. On standard UK and some other European keyboards, the same keystrokes produce the [[Pound sign|pound (sterling) sign, Template:Char symbol]], and Template:Keypress may be moved to a separate key above the right shift key. If there is no key, the symbol can be produced on Windows with Template:KeypressTemplate:Keypress, on Mac OS with Template:Keypress, and on Linux with Template:KeypressTemplate:KeypressTemplate:Keypress.

See also

Template:For

Explanatory notes

Template:Notelist

References

Template:Reflist

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  1. ↑ Template:Cite web
  2. ↑ Template:Cite web
  3. ↑ Template:Cite web
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Template:Cite book
  5. ↑ Template:Cite book
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Template:Cite web
  7. ↑ Template:Cite book
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Template:Cite news
  9. ↑ Template:Cite web
  10. ↑ Template:Cite book
  11. ↑ Template:Cite book
  12. ↑ Template:Cite book
  13. ↑ e.g. J. W. Marley, "The Detection and Illustration of Forgery By Comparison of Handwriting", in Template:Cite book
  14. ↑ e.g. The British Printer vol. viii (1895), p. 395
  15. ↑ Template:Cite book
  16. ↑ Template:Cite book
  17. ↑ Research Review. Navorsingsoorsig vols. 18–21, pp. 117, 259 (1968)
  18. ↑ Template:Cite web
  19. ↑ "Channel Scope". Section 2.2. Template:IETF RFC
  20. ↑ Template:Cite web
  21. ↑ Template:Cite news
  22. ↑ Template:Cite news
  23. ↑ Template:Cite book
  24. ↑ Template:Cite web
  25. ↑ Template:Cite news
  26. ↑ Template:Cite news
  27. ↑ Template:Cite web
  28. ↑ Template:Cite dictionary
  29. ↑ Template:Cite web
  30. ↑ Template:Cite web
  31. ↑ Template:Cite web
  32. ↑ Template:Cite magazine
  33. ↑ Ralph Carlsen, "What the ####?" Telecoms Heritage Journal 28 (1996): 52–53.
  34. ↑ 34.0 34.1 Template:Cite web
  35. ↑ John Baugh, Robert Hass, Maxine H. Kingston, et al., "Octothorpe", The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000)
  36. ↑ Template:Cite web
  37. ↑ Bringhurst, "Octothorpe". Elements of Typographic Style
  38. ↑ "You Asked Us: About the * and # on the New Phones", The Calgary Herald, September 9, 1972, 90.
  39. ↑ Template:Cite web
  40. ↑ Template:Cite web
  41. ↑ Template:Cite book
  42. ↑ Template:Cite web
  43. ↑ Template:Cite web
  44. ↑ Template:Cite web
  45. ↑ Template:Cite web
  46. ↑ HTML5 is the only version of HTML that has a named entity for the number sign, see https://www.w3.org/TR/html4/sgml/entities.html Template:Webarchive ("The following sections present the complete lists of character entity references.") and https://www.w3.org/TR/2014/CR-html5-20140731/syntax.html#named-character-references Template:Webarchive ("num;").
  47. ↑ Template:Cite web
  48. ↑ Template:Cite web
  49. ↑ Template:Cite web
  50. ↑ Template:Cite web
  51. ↑ Template:Cite web
  52. ↑ Template:Cite magazine
  53. ↑ Template:Cite web
  54. ↑ Template:Cite web
  55. ↑ Template:Cite web
  56. ↑ Template:Cite book
  57. ↑ Template:Cite book
  58. ↑ Template:Cite web
  59. ↑ Template:Cite web from Merriam Webster
  60. ↑ Template:Cite web
  61. ↑ Template:Cite web
  62. ↑ Template:Cite web
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