Divided by an ocean and a common language

[alanstancliff]

Mah gunnus grayshus! Ah'm a bit slow on the uptayak heah.

[Odat]

Back at our old office we had a phone system where everyone had a single digit extension number. Whenever anyone called they would have to press the extension that they wanted and then the # key to be transferred.

When we set up the attendant message, it said something like "To speak to the receptionist, press 0 followed by the number sign, to speak to Chris, press 1 followed by the pound key, and to speak to Terence press 2 followed by the Octothorpe key".

It was meant as a joke, but be danged if over the course of a year nobody every specifically rang up my extension. Many a call to my co-worker started with him explaining what the Octothorpe was and then transferring the call to me. As an added bonus Telemarketers zoned in on his number like a bee to pollen, saving me extra hassles.

And to skew back on topic for a moment and keep myself out of trouble, I can't tell any difference between the UK catalog and the Canada catalog in Xara, I'm presuming because we Canadians also spell words with extra O's and U's as well. Does that have any effect on anything besides the text in messages and in dialogs and such?

[samrc]

Only available as a downgrade... ;-)

Faster download though - verb table formed directly from nouns..

(Excellent! was chuckling outloud!)

I have always understood that # is "pound" key because 1lb = 1#
Symbol stands for lb. Certainly use that in our business (selling pounds of color, etc)

[pauland]

It's interesting because I've never associated # with lb.

Is it just that us brits don't use the # symbol for weight, or is it just me that's never known that # = lb?

[steve.ledger]

Ah very intersting indeed.
Pauland, apparently the origin of the # for use as the pound weight sign, was in crossing the 'l' of 'lb' for print purposes so as to not mistake the lower case 'l' for the number '1'

Accordingly Wiki explains:

Naming convention within North America

In some regions of the United States and Canada, the symbol is traditionally called the pound sign, but in others, the number sign. This derives from a series of abbreviations for pound, which is a unit of weight. At first "lb." was used; however, printers later designed a font containing a special symbol of an "lb" with a line through the ascenders so that the lowercase letter "l" would not be mistaken for the number "1". Unicode character U+2114 (℔) is called the "LB Bar Symbol," and it is a cursive development of this symbol. Ultimately, there was the reduction to a combination of two horizontal strokes (cf. skewed "=") and two forward-slash-like strokes (cf. "//"). In this respect, names like fence or square — as well as the representation of the sign containing two vertical strokes (rather than slanted ones), as on many keyboards — are misleading.

Its traditional commercial use in the U.S. was such that when it followed a number, it was to be read as "pounds," as in 5# of sugar, and when it preceded a number, it was to be read as 'number', as in #2 pencil. Thus the same character in a printer's type case had two uses.

Sometimes the small things have a more interesting history

[samrc]

Its traditional commercial use in the U.S. was such that when it followed a number, it was to be read as "pounds," as in 5# of sugar, and when it preceded a number, it was to be read as 'number', as in #2 pencil. Thus the same character in a printer's type case had two uses.

Exactly! This still is accurate!

[ss-kalm]

One thing has always intrigued me. What's the origin of Americans calling the '#' key (hash key here in the UK) the pound key?

Paul

I thought that it was because that's the key you pound on when your stuck in the telephone voice jail.

Being brought up in the UK, I've always called it a "Hash" but no-one in Canada understood what the heck I was talking about ....... Let's face it most of my Canadian friends still can't understand Lancashire dialect. I've tried getting them to listen to Mike Harding, but they don't seem to understand him either.

[zaphodeist]

... I've tried getting them to listen to Mike Harding, but they don't seem to understand him either...

Try some John Cooper Clarke on them

[ankhor]

One thing has always intrigued me. What's the origin of Americans calling the '#' key (hash key here in the UK) the pound key?

Paul

Hahaha, you wouldn`t like to know how we called these things in Holland.

# - hekje (fence)

@ - apestaartje (monkeytail)

I am not kidding, even when it is the first of april.

[amoore]

# - hekje (fence)

@ - apestaartje (monkeytail)

Sounds good to me.