From: Doug Ewell (dewell@adelphia.net)
Date: Tue Mar 29 2005 - 20:54:53 CST
Philippe VERDY <verdy underscore p at wanadoo dot fr> wrote:
> Add the only recognized name for '#' in French: "dièse", after the
> name of the musical symbol. In French, this symbol is not used and
> recognized for anything else than musical notation, or for the symbol
> that is shown on phone keypads and that everybody calls "dièse" too.
>
> (So NO connection with any currency or weight units, and is not
> apparently never used as an abbreviation too, and if you ask to people
> about such usage they will think it means "different from" as an
> alternate representation with two slashes over the equal sign).
I would add that in English... OK, in Southern California... "pound
sign" seems to be the most common name of the character even among
people who have never used it to mean "pounds," and might be totally
confused if they ever saw a package with "30#" written on it.
"Pound sign" is just the name people have called it all their lives. If
we had grown up calling it "Bob," it would still be "Bob" today.
-Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California
http://users.adelphia.net/~dewell/
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