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From: landauer@drivax.UUCP (Doug Landauer)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: question about names for symbols
Message-ID: <165@drivax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 26-Jun-85 04:13:10 EDT
Article-I.D.: drivax.165
Posted: Wed Jun 26 04:13:10 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 3-Jul-85 07:12:04 EDT
References: <2041@iddic.UUCP>
Distribution: net
Organization: Digital Research, Monterey, CA
Lines: 73

Rick Coates (...!tektronix!iddic!rick) asks
> What names are in use for the non-alpha characters in the ASCII code?
> I suspect that this issue has come up before ...
Yup.  A few months ago, a fairly complete list was posted of the spoken
names for many of the non-alpha characters in ASCII.  I forgot which
newsgroup it was posted to, but judging by the number of responses your
message got, it wasn't this one.  Unfortunately, I forgot who posted it. 
Fortunately, I did save a copy of it.  Here it is...  Thanks to that
unknown previous poster.  (I added a couple...)
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TERMINAL MUMPS:  Popular and Bizarre Character Names


Summarized from USENET articles, circa 1983.
Single characters listed in ASCII order, followed by multiples.
For each character, "official" names appear first, thence others
in order of popularity (more or less).


!   exclamation point, exclamation, bang, factorial, excl, ball-bat,
    smash, shriek, cuss, wow, hey
!?  interrobang (as one overlapped character)
"   double quote, quote, dirk, literal mark, rabbit ears
#   pound sign, number sign, sharp, crunch, mesh, hex, hash,
    flash, grid, pig-pen, tictactoe, scratchmark, octothorp (from
    Bell System)
$   dollar sign, currency symbol, buck, cash, string (from BASIC),
    escape (from TOPS-10), ding, big-money
%   percent sign, percent, mod, double-oh-seven
&   ampersand, amper, and, address (from C), andpersand
'   apostrophe, single quote, quote, prime, tick, irk, pop, spark
()  open/close parenthesis, left/right parenthesis, paren/thesis,
    parenthisey, unparenthisey, open/close round bracket, ears,
    so/already, wax/wane
*   asterisk, star, splat, wildcard, gear, dingle
+   plus sign, plus, add, cross, intersection
,   comma, tail
-   hyphen, dash, minus sign, worm
.   period, dot, decimal point, radix point, point, full stop, spot
/   virgule, slash, stroke, slant, diagonal, solidus, over, slat,
    oblique
:   colon, two-spot
;   semicolon, semi, hybrid
<>  angle brackets, left/right angle, less/greater than, read
    from / write to, from/into, from/toward, in/out, comesfrom/
    gozinta (all from UNIX), funnel, brokets, crunch/zap, suck/blow
=   equal sign, equals, quadrathorp, gets, half-mesh
?   question mark, whatmark, what, wildchar, ques, huh, quark
@   at sign, at, each, vortex, whorl, whirlpool, cyclone, snail,
    ape, cat, address
V   vee, book
[]  square brackets, left/right bracket, bracket/unbracket, bra/ket,
    square/unsquare, U turns
\   reversed virgule, backslash, bash, backslant, backwhack, backslat,
    escape (from UNIX), back oblique
^   circumflex, caret, uparrow, hat, chevron, sharkfin, to ("to
    the power of"), fang
_   underscore, underline, underbar, under, score, backarrow, flatworm
`   grave accent, grave, backquote, left quote, open quote, backprime,
    unapostrophe, backspark, birk, blugle, back tick, push
{}  open/close brace, left/right brace, brace/unbrace, curly bracket,
    curly/uncurly, leftit/rytit, embrace/bracelet
|   vertical bar, bar, or, v-bar, spike, pipe, gozinta, thru,
    pipesinta (last four from UNIX)
~   tilde, swung dash, squiggle, approx, wiggle, twiddle, enyay

/*  slashterisk
*/  asterslash
>>  cat-astrophe
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			-- Doug Landauer --
	...[ ihnp4 | mot | ucscc | amdahl ] !drivax!landauer