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From: bobm@rtech.UUCP (Bob Mcqueer)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Names for symbols (ASCII char variety)
Message-ID: <536@rtech.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 5-Jul-85 19:09:52 EDT
Article-I.D.: rtech.536
Posted: Fri Jul  5 19:09:52 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 9-Jul-85 05:35:47 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: Relational Technology, Alameda CA
Lines: 92

I wish I could find the results of the discussion in net.misc
about a year and half back.  Somebody did a lengthy summary of names
which was kind of interesting.

I'll give what I can remember, have observed and have excerpted from
articles thus far.  When a name for a symbol derives from use in
some particular context (such as "pipe" for | from UNIX shell), it is
listed only if the character name has been known to extend to other
contexts, at least among the people familiar with the original.

I use [] for optional usage, | for selection of alternate terms, and
() to delimit my own comments.  I mark the "correct" name, so far as I know,
with *, and my personal preferences with !.  Call my marks whatever you
like, I guess.

$ dollar! [sign]*, escape (from the TECO editor, which echoed escape
	as $.  I had this habit myself, years ago)
^ hat, up, up arrow, caret*!, pointer, exponent, circumflex (strictly
	speaking, I think this usage is intended for this character
	placed over another letter.  Also note that "up-arrow" is
	probably a holdover from the old teletypes which printed the
	character this way)
& and, ampersand*!
* star!, asterisk!*, gear, splat, sprocket, times
~ squiggle, wiggle, whammy, snake, swung dash, twiddle!, tilde*!
/ slash!, virgule*, divide, over
\ back, backslash!, backwhack, slosh, escape, back-oblique, reverse virgule*
' [single] quote!, squote, quotation mark*, accent [mark]*, apostrophe*
" [double] quote!, quotation mark*, accent [mark]*

	(note: the confusion between double and single quotes which we all
	deal with constantly is even reflected in the dictionary I
	referred to (AHD).  It defines "quotation mark" AND "accent mark"
	as referring to either symbol.  For typeset text, apostrophe is
	the right half of a single quote pair since the left one is
	upside down.)

` baquote, back quote, grave! [accent]* (now, maybe for symettry's sake,
	this suggests that "accent" be used for ' and "quote" for ")
# number [sign]*, pound! [sign]*, hash, octothorp (phone company name
	for the symbol)
| vertical, pipe! [sign], or [sign]!, [vertical] bar*

	(what to call the (), <>, [], {} pairs is probably the worst mess:
	you can probably assume that "open" and "close" may be used
	in place of "left" and "right" all the way through.  When
	somebody uses "left/open" or "close/right" with no other terms,
	I think they most often mean (), although I've heard this used
	for {}, also.  Use of the directional adjective without type is
	probably limited to conversations where the type is obvious to
	both speakers (if we're discussing c statement constructs, I
	understand that by "open", you mean {, etc))

( [left] paren[thesis]*!, [left] round bracket
) [right] paren[thesis]*!, [right] round bracket
< [left] angle|pointy!|corner [bracket], suck (wonderful combination of
	vulgarity and UNIX), less [than! [sign]], [left] brocket, bra
> [right] angle|pointy!|corner [bracket], blow, greater [than! [sign]],
	[right] brocket, ket (the "bra", "ket" pair come from notation
	used in quantum mechanics)
{ [left] [curley] brace*, [left] curley!|squirrely [bracket], begin (
	old ALGOL programmers never die?  Yes, I have heard this name
	for { used in several contexts)
} [right] [curley] brace*, [right] curley!|squirrely [bracket], end
[ [left] square [brace|bracket!], [left] hard bracket 
] [right] square [brace|bracket!], [right] hard bracket

	(note: the dictionary once again confuses things, defining "brace"
	to mean the {, } pair, but bracket to mean either <, > or [, ].)

! shriek, yell, bang!, ballbat! (I sometimes find myself using this one,
	thank you JWS), exclamation point*, exclam, not
_ under!, underline, underscore ("foo under bar" rolls off the tounge
	rather well)
. period*, dot!
- dash*, minus! [sign], hyphen* (for typesetters, hyphen and dash are
	different characters)
@ at! [sign]*, kill (I believe there's some names for @, % that creep
	into the conversation of people who've been around TOPS-10.  I
	can't remember them)
% percent! [sign]*
+ plus! [sign]*
= equals! [sign]*
: colon!*
; semicolon!*, semi
, comma!*
? question mark!* (it seems odd to me that I can't think of a colloquial
	name for this character - "question mark" seems clumsy enough for
	it to merit one)

Bob McQueer
ihnp4!amdahl!rtech!bobm