On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 04:13:56PM +0000, Pigeon wrote:
> I tend to use terms like "quid" or "pound" because I still expect
> pound (£) signs to be turned into hash (#) signs by non-British
> equipment. To make matters worse, Americans sometimes call hash signs
> pound signs, so asking "did my pound signs come out OK" can get a
> misleading answer. Puzzles me a bit - I thought # was an American
> symbol anyway - does it just have two American names, one of which is
> better at crossing oceans? (Because "pound" is heavy, and sinks?)
Your '£' character worked here, though I make sure I have my locale set
properly ("en_US" where I am, in sunny South Dakota).
The '#' has a crapload of names: some I know are
1) "pound" sign; apparently bags of dry goods used to have the number
of pounds followed by the '#' sign. I learned this term back in my
Apple ][ days (or daze). The phone company annoyingly calls this the
pound key (yet the asterisk is the star key? Whatever).
2) "sharp" sign; ask a musician. I learned this one while taking
violin lessons, but I've never referred to the '#' as a "sharp".
3) "hash"; dunno what the origin is but it works for me; I tend to use
this term exclusively to avoid confusion.
4) "octothorpe"; I guess this is the typographical name or something.
I even used to know _why_, but I'm too lazy to look it up.
PS Is there a one character symbol for a shilling? Does anyone other
than the US use the '¢' (cent) character? How the hell do I type a
euro character? :-)
PPS i just used the compose key in PuTTY ... cool!
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