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Re: Bug#132885: ITP: mcs -- C# compiler



On Fri, Feb 08, 2002 at 01:53:33PM -0800, Craig Dickson wrote:
> begin  Pete Ryland  quotation:

> > Does that mean that USAns call "hash-bang" "pound exclamation (mark|point)"?
> 
> No. Actually USians call # any number of things, including "hash",
> "number sign", and "pound sign". I suspect "number sign" is probably the
> most widely recognized outside the computer world. Everybody here knows
> what it means to write "#23" (number twenty-three), but I suspect "23#"
> (meaning twenty-three pounds) would confuse a lot of people.

One of the few places Americans use # to mean "pound" is in our totally
inexplicable (or at least anachronistic) paper quality system (where, 20#
bond is typical printer paper).  However, 20# bond is not the same weight
as 20# text or 20# offset, as the weights of differnt grades are measured
with different sized 500 sheet reams of paper.  Of course, Europeans have
the entirely sensible metric measurement of g/m^2.

Just contributing my bit of random trivia... (and setting m-f-t: curiosa
where this kind of tangent is far more on topic)

-- 
Steven Barker                                      scbarker@uiuc.edu
  Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced -- even a
  proverb is no proverb to you till your life has illustrated it.
  		-- John Keats
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