Re: Names of ASCII Symbols

On Thu, 15 Jan 1998 12:53:17 GMT, rabrody@earthlink.net_NOJUNK (Robert
Brody) wrote:

>"Kathy" <kit...@bellatlantic.spamminator.net> wrote:
>
>>I am entirely in agreement . . . that "pound sign" is a less logical
>>term for this symbol than "hash".  But the name preference persists in the
>>US nonetheless.  Most people do not come across the symbol used for money
>>in Great Britain, so there is little in the US to be confused about. 
>
>I'm not familiar with telephones in Great Britain so I don't know what
>a touch tone phone in G.B. looks like.  As you probably know, the
>touch tone phones here in the U.S. have the hash/pound/tic-tac-toe key
>which is usually referred to as pound when using a voice menuing
>system, faxback, etc., which asks for input and then instructs to
>press pound to complete the input.  I can't recall ever having heard
>the message say press hash, or anything else other than pound.  I'd be
>curious how that's handled in G.B.  (The closest I've come to a voice
>menuing phone system in G.B. was a British company with offices in the
>U.S.  The recording was a very pleasant woman with a delightful
>English accent but she did say press the pound key to complete an
>entry.)
>
As in so many other things, the British are generally forced to come
to terms with American cultural imperialism and accept the American
usage in this context.  But in any other context, the pound sign in
Britain means the one denoting the country's currency.

As a former programmer, I always heard the # symbol called the hash
sign or hash mark until voice response telephone systems came out of
the USA.

Rod

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