Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site rtech.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!mtuxo!mtunh!mtung!mtunf!ariel!vax135!petsd!pesnta!hplabs!amdahl!rtech!bobm 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