And the Answer is…

It’s been a while since we’ve had a test so, let’s begin with one today.

 

Q:  The following symbol is called ____________.  Symbol: #

 

A:  You are wrong.

 

Okay, that wasn’t fair.  But, you are still wrong.

 

In the event you said “#” is “hashtag,” you are incorrect because it is a pound sign.

 

If you said “#” is the symbol for a pound sign, you’re wrong.

 

The pound sign is correctly represented by “£.”

 

Confusing, ain’t it?

 

As a child, I was taught # was a pound sign.  It appears on telephones and computers, and was known as a pound sign pretty much everywhere except the United Kingdom and Ireland.

 

There, the pound sign is £, which represents their money, the pound sterling, also known as the Great British Pound (GBP).

 

If you think that is confusing, in Great Britain, # was known as “hatch” not “hash.”  This corrupted word now creates confusion world-wide, with few people agreeing on its meaning.  Therefore, it should be a “hatchtag.”  It ain’t.

 

In Chinese it is called a cross.  In fact, # is the Chinese character for water well.

 

In the event you are a musician, # is called a sharp sign which denotes a change or augmentation of a note or chord.

 

Should you be editing documents, that # symbol is used for a variety of corrections of lines, margins, or spaces.

 

It can be a sink or a fence in architecture, a scratch mark, a crosshatch, or a waffle.

 

When you were three years-old, it was a tic-tac-toe game board.

 

So, no matter what you answered on the quiz, you were both wrong and right.

 

But it has become tiresome to hear the word “hashtag” in every commercial that tries to be hip, and confusing to those of us who have lives outside of the digital world.

 

Besides, at my advanced age I immediately think of fried potatoes when I hear hashtag, mistaking it for hashbrowns.

 

I’m hungry.  Stop it!