Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!rutgers!ucsd!ucbvax!hplabs!pyramid!athertn!ericb
From: ericb@athertn.Atherton.COM (Eric Black)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Yea, but can an Amiga Shell do this....
Summary: Pronounceable names for punctuation
Message-ID: <215@mango.athertn.Atherton.COM>
Date: 15 Aug 88 15:41:04 GMT
References: <2213@ihlpm.ATT.COM> <6804@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU> <1284@flatline.UUCP> <2466@sugar.uu.net>
Reply-To: ericb@mango.UUCP (Eric Black)
Organization: Atherton Technology, Sunnyvale, CA
Lines: 64

In article <2466@sugar.uu.net> peter@sugar.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
>In article <1284@flatline.UUCP>, erict@flatline.UUCP (j eric townsend) writes:
>> What the hell's a "backtick".  Is it anything like a grave'? :-)
>
>A backtick is actually a FORTH term for the back-quote or grave accent. Why
>these people are applying it in this context is beyond me.
>-- 

Probably because "backtick" is a whole lot easier to pronounce than
"grave accent" or "backwards single quote", and somewhat easier than
"back quote".

Old hackers have similarly pronounceable names for most punctuation.  Here
are some that I use myself in spoken conversation:

	'!' is "bang" [UNIX and UUCP life forms know this one well]
		      [in C programs, it's more commonly called "not"]
	'.' is "dot"  [also quite common]
	'@' is "at"   [pretty obvious]
	'#' is "pound" [Stanford types sometimes use "hash", I'm an MIT type]
	'^' is "up"   [_nobody_ seems to understand "circumflex"]
	'*' is "star" [some people "splat", but others use "splat" for '#'...]
	'|' is "pipe" [even in non-UNIX contexts]
	'~' is "squiggle" [some folks don't know whether "tilde" is '~' or '^']
	'_' is "bar"  [MUCH easier to say than "underscore"]
	'?' is "ques"
	'/' is "slash"
	'\' is "back-slash"
	'\'' is "tick" [would you REALLY rather say "single quote"?]
	'"' is "quote" [sometimes "double quote", depending on context]
	';' is "semi" [that's "sem-ee"]
	'&' is "and"  [just _try_ to say "ampersand" fast without tangling]

Some spoken terms are not easier to pronounce, but make it harder to confuse
the symbol with another:

	'{' is "curly-brace"
	'}' is "close curly-brace"
	'[' is "square bracket'
	']' is "close square bracket"

Some C di-graphs:

	"->' is "points to"
	"==" is "equal to"
	"!=" is "not equal to"
	"+=" is "bump up"
	"-=" is "bump down"
	"++" is "bump", "pre-bump", or "post-bump", as appropriate
	"&&" is "and and" or "double and" [NOT "ampersand ampersand"!]
	"||" is "or or" [slap the backs of your hands together while
			 balancing a ball on your nose]

I don't know, but I suspect that the pronounceable FORTH word "tick" is not
original with FORTH.  Many of these terms were in common use by the late
sixties/early seventies, and I have no idea when the FORTH word "'" was
first pronounced as "tick".


-- 
Eric Black	"Garbage in, Gospel out"
Atherton Technology, 1333 Bordeaux Dr., Sunnyvale, CA, 94089
   UUCP:	{sun,decwrl,hpda,pyramid}!athertn!ericb
   Domainist:	ericb@Atherton.COM