Question to the Americans about the '#' symbol...
 

When I was in the USA, before twitter existed, the only time I came across the # symbol was on your phones. You always referred to it as the 'Pound' key - Press pound etc...

This confused me at first cause to me it was the hash key, but no biggy... I joined in and called it the pound key as well. That way we all knew what we were talking about.

Now with twitter you lot all call it the hash tag - Like I called it the hash key...

So the question is, did you all change with twitter, or was it something else? Interestingly enough, to produce the # symbol on my apple keyboard, I have to push 'alt 3' which is the symbol of the '£' (Pound) on my keyboard !

When did you stop calling it the pound symbol and start calling it the hash???

also called the 'number' sign and it's the symbol for sharp

Twitter calls it Hash Tag, so I do too.

On phones or anything else, I call it the Pound sign.

So....both.

It's called a pound sign, which incidentally is also the key you use on a Mac to make a pound symbol if you're on a US / AUS keyboard.

# - normal #
£ - option + #

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_%28music%29

P.S. I'm not an American but sharp is an international musical symbol and it believe it was used long time before it also became a synonym of "number".

Most Americans had no idea what a pound key was when prompted. They would stare at their phones endlessly. Now twitter has given them something to call the symbol.

Most probably still get confused, not knowing they are one in the same. Half of this forum is looking at their phones right now.

I say call it what you want so long as everyone is on the same page.

This symbol # was originally designed to confuse Brits during the American revolution. Apparently, it is still confusing Brits.

Why is it confusing Brits? We called it hash to begin with but others called it something else. Now others call it the same as the Brits always have. My question was when did others get with the program? Whats confusing?

The correct terminology is pound, even though Brits, Aussies, Kiwis call it a hash.

It comes from latin, libra pondo which literally means weight.

When latin was less popular in western Europe it was common to put a strike through a common latin abbreviation. So imagine lb with a strike through the top and you've got something that looks like #.

The german company Heidelberg started producing type blocks with # symbols very early in their printing products. Linotype also used it. Typewriters had it. Almost all the printing world used it and it became common to express imperial currency using a # in non English speaking countries thanks to the Heidelberg presses all over the world.

When the US telephone system was automated, and early dialling was decadic, ordinary phones just had number 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,9 things were simply expressed on the dial. However with the advent of DTMF there needed to be some new keys for other functions. Since DTMF is actually usually hexadecimal it was thought having 16 button hexadecimal keypads would be unwieldy, so # and * were decided upon and Bell Labs produced the first 12 button DTMF phones with these symbols. This also became adopted world wide.

The American usage of the word pound is absolutely correct when it comes to the etymology of the symbol however to those of us under British colonial rule, we call it a hash symbol and it seems even Twitter agree because they call it a hashtag - which sounds cooler than a poundtag.

:)

Actually... poundtag sounds much cooler. IMO of course.

You have a vivid imagination.

in some places call this # - taraba