Pound sign (was Re: the Telephone Test)

[David Brooks]

In article <27109 at ism780c.isc.com> marv at ism780.UUCP (Marvin Rubenstein) writes:
>
>Believe it or not, there is a document for ANSII.  It gives the names for
>each of the characters in the character set.  Some examples:
>
>      #  pound sign
>      ^  circumflex
>      \  reverse slant
>      _  underline
>      ~  overline (or tilda)
>      `  accent grave
>      @  comercial at sign
>
>   Marv Rubinstein

Damn.  I lost my ASCII definition (X3.4).  But in the newer ANS 7-bit
and 8-bit multilingual graphic character set standard it says:

	#		NUMBER SIGN

And in ISO646, the international equivalent to X3.4:

	<curly-L>	POUND SIGN
	#		NUMBER SIGN

I lived in England for 33 years, and I never ever ever ever saw # used
for pounds weight -- always lb.  I still find # = pound mildly
irritating, but I defer to Websters for American usage.

My theory was that the confusion arises from this very ISO standard,
which allows 2/3 to be either # or pound-sterling.  Consequently some
British teletypes (yes, I did say 33 years) put pound sterling on the
shift-3 key, and -- well, you can imagine the rest.  But this theory
has had cold water poured on it by the originator of the question.

If you are reading this on such an ancient British teletype, you are
by now very confused.
-- 
David Brooks			dbrooks at osf.org
Open Software Foundation	uunet!osf.org!dbrooks
11 Cambridge Center		Personal views, not necessarily those
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