Comments on: Comments on 16989

Post number 16989

fnirt — Wed, 08 May 2002 14:12:12 -0800

Why is there no cent sign on computers? I've always wondered why we had a dollar sign, but no sent sign. Now I know.

By: me3dia

me3dia — Wed, 08 May 2002 14:14:57 -0800

Personally, I'm more inclined to add an http:// key.

By: fnirt

fnirt — Wed, 08 May 2002 14:17:12 -0800

Ever vigilant to make sure I didn't double post, I completely skipped the spelling error. Sorry! c/sent/cent

By: perplexed

perplexed — Wed, 08 May 2002 14:24:41 -0800

FYI: If you're on Windows just hold the ALT key down while you punch 0162 (make sure you hit the leading 0) and you'll get a ¢ sign. I used to work in an office where the ¢ sign was used for delimiting. And I'm always using the ° sign (ALT-0176) for some reason. Interesting link, thanks.

By: mrbula

mrbula — Wed, 08 May 2002 14:29:14 -0800

For what it's worth, &#162 = Â¢.

By: boaz

boaz — Wed, 08 May 2002 14:33:16 -0800

Cool link. I especially love the part where he goes through the set complaining about all the characters that made the cut instead of the cent. Oh yeah. option-4 on a mac.

By: Mo Nickels

Mo Nickels — Wed, 08 May 2002 14:34:01 -0800

On a Mac it's option-4 (nicely logical, since shift-4 is $).

By: gluechunk

gluechunk — Wed, 08 May 2002 14:37:17 -0800

Are there already keyboards that have an @ key (i.e. you can get @ without using the Shift key)? I always thought that that would be a useful key to have. I like watching people fruitlessly look for a digit 1 key on some typewriters. And hey, have you heard about option-4 on a mac?

By: bittennails

bittennails — Wed, 08 May 2002 14:37:57 -0800

Great fun. You know boaz, I use 'keycaps' on my mac almost every day, comparing various fonts and the like, and I never looked for that. Did try it out instantly though in simpletext :)

By: Shadowkeeper

Shadowkeeper — Wed, 08 May 2002 14:37:57 -0800

Great post, fnirt.

By: Argyle

Argyle — Wed, 08 May 2002 14:38:06 -0800

Hrrm, under WinXp, you need to do the alt combo and hit the numbers on the keypad section. It doesn't seem to work on number row above qwerty. Alt-0143 = Alt-0162 = ¢ Alt-0176 = ° Neat-o

By: bittennails

bittennails — Wed, 08 May 2002 14:41:58 -0800

Now thats what I call a great logo, imagine if it stayed.

By: bingo

bingo — Wed, 08 May 2002 14:53:45 -0800

Of course, if you need to use it often, you can always program in that shift-key combo as a macro, on say, MS Word, so that all you have to actually push is Alt-C for example.

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Wed, 08 May 2002 14:53:58 -0800

Alt-168 has always been my favorite. ¿Que?

By: Grangousier

Grangousier — Wed, 08 May 2002 15:04:29 -0800

Why do you call a hash ( # ) a pound sign? This is a pound sign: £ (My theory being that the two were/are in the other's places on Mac and PC keyboards - alt-3 on the Mac keyboard for the # and shift-3 for the £, somebody got confused and the name stuck)

By: Mars Saxman

Mars Saxman — Wed, 08 May 2002 15:09:04 -0800

Grangousier: # indicates pounds of weight (lbs) where £ indicates currency (pounds sterling). It's mostly used in agriculture, as far as I know.

By: birgitte

birgitte — Wed, 08 May 2002 15:14:23 -0800

# was previously used to indicate weight (lbs). The symbol also goes by the name octothorpe, but this really hasn't caught on. Do Egyptian Pounds go by the same symbol? Guess it is time for some googling.

By: moz

moz — Wed, 08 May 2002 15:14:45 -0800

two ÷ zero.

By: yerfatma

yerfatma — Wed, 08 May 2002 15:29:31 -0800

you need to do the alt combo and hit the numbers on the keypad section You need to do that in all versions of Windows (that I've ever seen). I don't know why. You just do.

By: vbfg

vbfg — Wed, 08 May 2002 15:34:51 -0800

Is there a key on the Mac to print the option key symbol?

By: gluechunk

gluechunk — Wed, 08 May 2002 15:40:42 -0800

Is there a key on the Mac to print the option key symbol? You mean the Apple key? (The option key doesn't have a symbol.) Try control+t . And then check out the Key Caps app under the Apple Menu for more fun (er, although I'm not sure if there's key caps in OSX...)

By: silusGROK

silusGROK — Wed, 08 May 2002 15:44:01 -0800

Yes... assuming you have a font that prints it, it's CONTROL-OPTION-Q. (Man, I love KeyCaps!)

By: planetkyoto

planetkyoto — Wed, 08 May 2002 15:50:49 -0800

gluechunk: Are there already keyboards that have an @ key (i.e. you can get @ without using the Shift key)? On a Japanese keyboard, the "@" symbol is right next to the "p" key, where an U.S. keyboard has "[". It's a straight shot, no shift key. Before you run out and buy a Japanese keyboard, though, let me inform you that the quotation mark takes over @'s position at shift-2, and : is where you expect to find ", and the worst thing is that the apostrophe is relegated to shift-7. And there's more, although the letters are all where you expect them. This will explain why I am typing this on my US keyboard iBook instead of my J keyboard iMac.

By: jnthnjng

jnthnjng — Wed, 08 May 2002 15:52:19 -0800

sorry to derail this thread further, but as far as I know, Egyptians use the arabic character for 'G' to refer to an egyptian pound (since in arabic, they call them gineeh)

By: jozxyqk

jozxyqk — Wed, 08 May 2002 16:02:07 -0800

# is called an octothorpe.

By: Tarrant

Tarrant — Wed, 08 May 2002 16:10:42 -0800

planetkyoto: That Japanese keyboard sounds remarkably like my old C-64.

By: RevGreg

RevGreg — Wed, 08 May 2002 16:11:40 -0800

Is there a key on the Mac to print the option key symbol? I don't think there is a symbol for the "option" key...there is one for the "command" key though which looks sort of like a four leaf clover. It is sometimes referred to as a "splat" key because it may also look like you smashed a bug under your finger! Of course there are also the long missing "open apple" and "closed apple" keys - I've got a few of those ancient keyboards laying around...

By: NortonDC

NortonDC — Wed, 08 May 2002 16:12:20 -0800

The real question is "Where the Hell is the interrobang?!"

By: patrickje

patrickje — Wed, 08 May 2002 16:20:27 -0800

What is it with pronouncable characters, i.e. # == pound ! == bang @ == at | == pipe Any other obscure ones out there?

By: ed

ed — Wed, 08 May 2002 16:30:42 -0800

You know, no one here has mentioned the umlaut, which if you're writing in German or adopting the New Yorker's style can be a real pain in the ass with your standard QWERTY keyboard, unless of course you're accustomed to the German keyboard in which the Y and Z are reversed, but alas, you have umlauts.

By: Captain Ligntning

Captain Ligntning — Wed, 08 May 2002 16:36:29 -0800

~ == twidle

By: Captain Ligntning

Captain Ligntning — Wed, 08 May 2002 16:38:06 -0800

Fun, though he's clueless on the <> characters. They were never intended as parentheticals. They were just for math, and so it makes sense that the order would be <>.

By: Captain Ligntning

Captain Ligntning — Wed, 08 May 2002 16:38:34 -0800

Make that < ,=,>.

By: hob

hob — Wed, 08 May 2002 16:39:39 -0800

~ == tilde ` == back tick {} == curly brace ^ == carat <> == angle bracket [] == bracket anybody have other names for these? >

By: Mack Twain

Mack Twain — Wed, 08 May 2002 16:52:32 -0800

That was fun...thank you very much¿

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Wed, 08 May 2002 16:56:58 -0800

I hate the tilde. Not because there's anything wrong with it, but because I had to try and direct clueless people to it when I did tech support. Me: "Now, type h-t-t-p-colon-slash-slash-w-w-w-dot-f-o-o-dot-c-o-m-slash-tilde-username" Customer: "What was that you said?" Me: "Tilde." Customer "What's that?" Me: "It's that squiggly thing up there next to the number one. You have to use shift to type it." Customer: "Ohhhhh...I always wondered what that was!" Me: "Sigh."

By: bobadoci

bobadoci — Wed, 08 May 2002 17:00:26 -0800

you need to do the alt combo and hit the numbers on the keypad section You need to do that in all versions of Windows (that I've ever seen). I don't know why. You just do. Isn't this just a direct way to access specific characters within the character map, and the number combination is like a pointer to a specific cell in a specific character set?

By: frenetic

frenetic — Wed, 08 May 2002 17:04:08 -0800

If I'm helping somebody and they're unfamiliar with computers I always start with "squiggly thing" and try "tilde" as a last resort. It saves time.

By: obiwanwasabi

obiwanwasabi — Wed, 08 May 2002 17:35:42 -0800

'Ass-key'. *giggle*

By: hob

hob — Wed, 08 May 2002 17:42:03 -0800

Are you the gatekeeper?

By: y2karl

y2karl — Wed, 08 May 2002 17:43:06 -0800

Here's my two ¢'s worth--it's a sad day when I have to go to WebMonkey to put that in this comment. But thanks for the post--I was just wondering what the story was on the ¢ sign only last week.

By: moz

moz — Wed, 08 May 2002 17:51:18 -0800

brackets '[]' are sometimes called 'sub' (mainly by me) due to the programming connotation that a[i] = a_i. % is often referred to as 'mod' (short for modulo) by programmers.

By: sauril

sauril — Wed, 08 May 2002 17:54:59 -0800

One quick thing on the ^ symbol: it also means "to the power of" in math-speak, so it's inclusion by a bunch of engineers is not surprising.

By: obiwanwasabi

obiwanwasabi — Wed, 08 May 2002 17:58:54 -0800

Are you the gatekeeper? Yes! Actually I'm a friend of his, he asked me to meet him here. Gozer the Traveler! He will come in one of the pre-chosen forms. During the rectification of the Vuldrini, the traveler came as a large and moving Torg! Then, during the third reconciliation of the last of the McKetrick supplicants, they chose a new form for him: that of a giant Slor! Many Shuvs and Zools knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Slor that day, I can tell you!

By: kurumi

kurumi — Wed, 08 May 2002 18:21:22 -0800

I like "Nathan Hale" for asterisk... as in "I have but one * for my country"

By: delmoi

delmoi — Wed, 08 May 2002 19:01:20 -0800

For those of you who don't know there are 256 'slots' in ascii (2^8), but only 128 were used initialy because the last bit was designed to be used as 'parity' to check to make sure that no data has been destroyed in transimission or something.

By: Zurishaddai

Zurishaddai — Wed, 08 May 2002 20:37:54 -0800

When it comes to names for characters, look here!!. All the names are there, from common to obscure. This is apparently the online version of The Hacker's Dictionary, which entertained me in the 80's by telling me how computer folk at Caltech etc. talked about everything from their take-out food to ASCII characters. For some reason, concepts such as * = splat really stuck in my head.

By: muckster

muckster — Wed, 08 May 2002 20:50:49 -0800

Ed, under Windows, the umlaut codes are: ALT+ 129 ü 132 ä 148 ö 153 Ö 154 Ü 142 Ä I used to switch between two software keyboard maps, one US, one German, but once you remember the codes, they're faster to use. I don't know where the 'sz' is since the Rechtschreibreform essentially made it obselete.

By: davidmsc

davidmsc — Wed, 08 May 2002 21:15:56 -0800

¢ Whee! It worked!

By: jaden

jaden — Wed, 08 May 2002 22:52:27 -0800

I've heard the combination of !# (used in shell scripting, perl etc.) called "shebang". Also, at a conference I was at the presenter referred to a forward slash as "whack". It made URLs quite fun to say: H-T-T-P colon whack whack. It reminded me of playing the whack-a-mole game at Chuck-e-cheese.

By: c3o

c3o — Thu, 09 May 2002 03:04:59 -0800

I think it's funny that there's not even an official sign for the Eurocent, so there's no other way to write, for example, € 0.02. To the people complaining about the location of @ - on German keyboards it's AltGr+Q (which by the way is the cause of great fun for German Windows users trying to send email on a Mac, where the right Apple key is at the spot where we expect the AltGr.. and Apple+Q does not have the desired effect! [for non-Mac-users: it's like Alt+F4 on Win]). The Euro symbol is AltGr+E (the $ at Shift-4) and the backslash AltGr+ß. ! ? " and ' are all on Shift, while ä ö ü ß are regular keys (and ß is far from obsolete despite the reform: Straße, gießen, heiß, außerdem etc.).

By: piskycritter

piskycritter — Thu, 09 May 2002 04:34:40 -0800

I think it's funny that there's not even an official sign for the Eurocent How about this:

By: CatherineB

CatherineB — Thu, 09 May 2002 04:39:33 -0800

unless of course you're accustomed to the German keyboard in which the Y and Z are reversed There's no way to customise your own keyboard layout, is there? I frequently have occasion to switch to the Croatian keyboard layout to get to its five extra letters, but it's based on the German so that whenever I hit what I think is Z (which must be the third or fourth most common letter) the sodding Y comes up. Would there be any fix that would swap the Y and the Z?

By: syzygy

syzygy — Thu, 09 May 2002 06:43:51 -0800

I used to switch between two software keyboard maps, one US, one German, but once you remember the codes, they're faster to use. I don't know where the 'sz' is since the Rechtschreibreform essentially made it obselete. Except that now the Rechtschreibreform is hotly debated (one of my coworkers had to write a program to translate his wife's recently published book from Rechtschreibreform style to classic style when the publisher changed his requirements after the book was already completed), and ß (Scharfes 'S' - which is actually 'SS', as opposed to 'SZ,' I believe) is still quite common. A google search on the German word for "fun" in Rechtschreibreform style (Spass) returns 1,370,000 matches. The same search using the Scharfes S (Spaß) returns 1,420,000 matches. On my German keyboard (as on all German keyboards) there is an Alt Gr key in place of the American right Alt key. Alt Gr basically mimics Alt + Ctl in one key. @ = Alt Gr + q € = Alt Gr + e Ö is to the right of L Ä is to the right of Ö Ü is to the right of P ß is to the right of 0 (the last 4 are accessed with one key each - no key combination needed). Ich wunsche euch viel Spaß!

By: dhartung

dhartung — Thu, 09 May 2002 11:41:35 -0800

CatherineB: these creators of a Hawaiian keyboard for Windows have links to keyboard generation and keyboard switching programs.

By: moz

moz — Fri, 10 May 2002 13:14:54 -0800

jaden: actually, the symbol used for perl and other such programs is "#!", not "!#".