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From: tonyp@atlantis.actrix.gen.nz (Tony Pritchard)
Subject: Re: Is '#' a "pound sign" or what?
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Date: Sun, 3 Mar 1996 00:38:12 GMT
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In article <4h573r$749@decaxp.harvard.edu>,
Ian Munro <imunro@scunix4.harvard.edu> wrote:
> Ohmigod--tempers are flaring over a typewriter key?  I think this only 
> goes to prove that this topic has been thoroughly killed and should be 
> buried somewhere.  Over the last six months or so, the following points 
> have been established: 
[long list snipped]

Here's a list of my own.

1) Outside the US, most people call it a hash. 
   (I for one have never heard it called anything else, even when it is 
   used to indicate, for instance, 'number' or 'space'.)

2) Outside the US (and I presume still the UK), nobody has any more than 
   the faintest idea what a "pound weight" is anyway, let alone that some 
   Americans apparently use a hash as the unit symbol, rather than 'lb'.
   (If American manuals include instructions such as "take 10# of ...", then 
   they will be read with total incomprehension by readers in other countries.)

Tony Pritchard
Lower Hutt, New Zealand
