Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site drivax.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!whuxlm!whuxl!houxm!mtuxo!mtunh!mtung!mtunf!ariel!vax135!timeinc!phri!pesnta!hplabs!amdahl!drivax!landauer 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...) ------------- 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 ------------- -- Doug Landauer -- ...[ ihnp4 | mot | ucscc | amdahl ] !drivax!landauer