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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,<ref name="oedNumberSign">Template:Cite web</ref> hash,<ref name="oedHash">Template:Cite web</ref> or pound sign<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> (this last name is rarely found outside North America). 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.<ref name="Houston">Template:Cite book</ref>

Since 2007, widespread usage of the symbol to introduce metadata tags on social media platforms has led to such tags being known as "hashtags",<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and from that, the symbol itself is sometimes called a hashtag.<ref name=hashtag>Template:Cite web</ref>

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

History

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File:Pfund.svg
A stylized version of the abbreviation for libra pondo ("pound weight")
File:Libra pondo abbreviation newton.jpg
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".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="NewYorker" /> The abbreviation "lb" was printed as a dedicated ligature including a horizontal line across (which indicated abbreviation).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="NewYorker" /> Ultimately, the symbol was reduced for clarity as an overlay of two horizontal strokes "=" across two slash-like strokes "//".<ref name="NewYorker">Template:Cite news</ref>

The symbol is described as the "number" character in an 1853 treatise on bookkeeping,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and its double meaning is described in a bookkeeping text from 1880.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The instruction manual of the Blickensderfer model 5 typewriter (Template:Circa) appears to refer to the symbol as the "number mark".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Some early-20th-century U.S. sources refer to it as the "number sign",<ref>e.g. J. W. Marley, "The Detection and Illustration of Forgery By Comparison of Handwriting", in Template:Cite book</ref> although this could also refer to the numero sign (Template:Not a typo).<ref>e.g. The British Printer vol. viii (1895), p. 395</ref> A 1917 manual distinguishes between two uses of the sign: "number (written before a figure)" and "pounds (written after a figure)".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The use of the phrase "pound sign" to refer to this symbol is found from 1932 in U.S. usage.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The term hash sign is found in South African writings from the late 1960s<ref>Research Review. Navorsingsoorsig vols. 18–21, pp. 117, 259 (1968)</ref> 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).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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.<ref name="Houston" />

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.<ref>"Channel Scope". Section 2.2. Template:IETF RFC</ref> This usage inspired Chris Messina to propose a similar system to be used on Twitter to tag topics of interest on the microblogging network;<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> this became known as a hashtag. Although used initially and most popularly on Twitter, hashtag use has extended to other social media sites.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Template:Anchor

Names

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Number sign

"Number sign" is the name chosen by the Unicode Consortium. Most common in Canada<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> This name is rarely used elsewhere in the world, where numbers are normally represented by the letters "No.".

Pound sign or pound

In the United States and Canada, 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".<ref name="nyt">Template:Cite news</ref> This name is rarely used elsewhere, as the term pound sign is understood to mean the currency symbol £.

Hash, hash mark, hashmark

In the United Kingdom,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Australia,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and some other countries,Template:Citation needed it is frequently called a "hash" (probably from "hatch", referring to cross-hatching<ref>Template:Cite dictionary</ref>).
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.<ref name=hashtag /> Twitter documentation refers to it as "the hashtag symbol".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Template:Vanchor, octothorpe, octathorp, octatherp

Most scholars believe the word was invented by workers at the Bell Telephone Laboratories by 1968,<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> 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.<ref>Ralph Carlsen, "What the ####?" Telecoms Heritage Journal 28 (1996): 52–53.</ref> 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.<ref name="Kerr">Template:Cite web</ref> The Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories, 1991, has a long article that is consistent with Doug Kerr's essay,<ref name="Kerr"/> 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<ref>John Baugh, Robert Hass, Maxine H. Kingston, et al., "Octothorpe", The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000)</ref> or using the Old English word for village, thorp, because the symbol looks like a village surrounded by eight fields.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Bringhurst, "Octothorpe". Elements of Typographic Style</ref> The word was popularized within and outside Bell Labs.<ref>"You Asked Us: About the * and # on the New Phones", The Calgary Herald, September 9, 1972, 90.</ref> 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".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

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'."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Square

File:Detail-Tastatur-FeTAp-751-1982.JPG
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."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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

Usage

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In North America, 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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.Template:Cn The text "5# bag of flour" would mean "five-pound bag of flour". This usage is very rare outside North America,

On telephone keypads, the Template:Keypress button is read in Northern America as "pound key" and in other Anglophone countries as "the hash key".

Mathematics

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Computing

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Other uses

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Unicode

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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 (#️⃣).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>Template:Efn

On keyboards

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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.

See also

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Explanatory notes

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Template:Notelist

References

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