From: John Hudson (tiro@tiro.com)
Date: Tue Mar 29 2005 - 02:29:32 CST
Arcane Jill wrote:
> Aha - I always wondered why I sometimes see hash refered to as "pound
> sign". I had previously assumed it had something to do with the "old
> days" (I can remember them) when we only had seven-bit encodings. In
> England, I can remember using a computer in which 0x23 encoded U+00A3
> (the real POUND SIGN), and certainly it is the case even now that
> SHIFT+3 gets you '#' on an American keyboard, but '£' on a British
> keyboard.
In North America, # is used as a symbol for pound in the paper industry, e.g. '70# text'
or '80# cover'. This is a weight designation. I don't know if this is also used in the UK
or elsewhere.
See, for example, http://www.anchorpaper.com/retail/Quotes/paperweights.htm
John Hudson
-- Tiro Typeworks www.tiro.com Vancouver, BC tiro@tiro.com Currently reading: A century of philosophy, by Hans Georg Gadamer David Jones: artist and poet, ed. Paul Hills
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