I've also heard "#" referred to as the "hash mark" in Europe.
What does that term refer to and how did it arrise?.
How is the button referred to on telephone systems in
various countries?
Clive Hohberger
Zebra Technologies
Chicago
> -----Original Message-----
> From: AddisonP [SMTP:[email protected]]
> Sent: Friday, November 13, 1998 4:03 AM
> To: Unicode List
> Subject: Re: little lines below
>
> The "#" mean "sharp" in music, so it is occasionally referred to as the
> "sharp
> sign". It's also in use in North America (and elsewhere) as the "pound"
> symbol
> (unit of weight rather than money), whence the English name in telephony
> systems. However the actual usage as an abbreviation of "pounds" is rather
> obscure to most speakers of English, since it is usually used to mean
> "number"
> (and the equally non-intuitive outside the culture "lbs." means
> "pounds")...
>
> Such an overloaded symbol...
>
> AP
> -----------------------------
> Addison Phillips
> Director, Technology
> SimulTrans, LLC
>
> [email protected]
> +1 650 526-4652
>
> "22 languages. One release date."
> -----------------------------
>
> Alain wrote:
>
> > A 18:27 98-11-12 -0800, Jonathan Coxhead a �crit :
> > > Alain LaBont� wrote,
> > >
> > > | The masculine and feminine indicators were initially coded in Latin
> 1
> > mainly
> > > | for Portuguese, a brother language of French (of course). That said,
> > > | anybody can use them, for any usage, in any language!
> > >
> > > Surely "no-one" [ :-) ] in the Western world uses 'No' anyway? It's
> > >mainly there for Russian, where it is used extensively, but where the
> > >letter 'N' does not exist (a Cyrillic 'N' looks like an 'H') except in
> > >this combination.
> > >
> > > In England, as in France I imagine, people would normally just write
> > >'No', or N<super>o</super>, or even '#'.
> >
> > [Alain] :
> > No can be seen (when there is no other alternative).
> > N� is more frequent since the last 25 years.
> > N<super>o</super> is "kosher" in French-speaking typography circles.
> >
> > # is *absolutely* not understood in France (I say this by ample
> > experience), while its usage is known in Qu�bec to mean the same thing
> as
> > in the rest of North America (Qu�bec is culturally almost exactly
> half-way
> > between France and English-speaking North America, in spite of its
> > language, that nevertheless makes this huge territory slightly more
> > European than American in culture (but it is indeed deeply
> North-American
> > since 4 [almost 5] centuries). Of course all of Canada know the # as
> > meaning "N�". However even Qu�becers call it "di�se" (the musical sign,
> I
> > don't know what is the name of this sign in English) rather than
> "symbole
> > num�ro"). Bell Canada (on telephone sets) sometimes calls it � carr� �
> > (� Appuyez sur le carr� �) in automated voice interfaces, which many
> people
> > find misleading. This has been corrected to � Appuyez sur le di�se � in
> > many voice systems.
> >
> > Alain LaBont�
> > San Antonio, Texas
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Tue Jul 10 2001 - 17:20:43 EDT