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Making a hash of things.
Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 06:05 pmDivided by a common language indeed.
As an Englishman (Hurrah!) in England, who speaks English, your correspondent was dismayed when trying to enter numbers and letters and other stuff on his mobile (cell) phone as instructed by the polite, recorded transatlantic female voice, to enter a "pound" sign.
Now since I do not have a pound sign (£)on my phone, I was perplexed. So perplexed that the phone timed out. Other than the answer call and end call buttons, helpfully coloured green and red respectively, I also have an odd little globe symbol that connects me to the GPRS version of the internet and helpfully empties my bank account, while the other is a ♫ dingbat1 that allows me (when I remember the headset) to listen to iTunes.
Tucked away at the bottom of the keypad there is an asterisk/star symbol (*). I'm never sure what that's for, but if I press it while texting, I get spaces. The other symbol is the hash/slash (#).
Now I'd always thought that the US usage had that as the 'number' symbol as in "issue #4 is now available"2. Well, apparently it does.
It also gets used as and called a 'pound' symbol, but pounds avoir dupoir (lbs)rather than pounds sterling (£).
News to me, but now I know. While I'm sitting nibbling on a biscuit (cookie), texting on my mobile (cell) phone and I have to press the pound (£) symbol I actually have to use the hash (#) and pretend it's a pound (£).
Simple.
1Which in Word is a nice little double musical note, but on this browser, just a little box. Why don't they make these things read across properly? Grumble..
2I was going to make up a fictitious sample publication name, but they all came out rude or bizarre or both, so I decided that might be too revealing of my deeper psyche...
As an Englishman (Hurrah!) in England, who speaks English, your correspondent was dismayed when trying to enter numbers and letters and other stuff on his mobile (cell) phone as instructed by the polite, recorded transatlantic female voice, to enter a "pound" sign.
Now since I do not have a pound sign (£)on my phone, I was perplexed. So perplexed that the phone timed out. Other than the answer call and end call buttons, helpfully coloured green and red respectively, I also have an odd little globe symbol that connects me to the GPRS version of the internet and helpfully empties my bank account, while the other is a ♫ dingbat1 that allows me (when I remember the headset) to listen to iTunes.
Tucked away at the bottom of the keypad there is an asterisk/star symbol (*). I'm never sure what that's for, but if I press it while texting, I get spaces. The other symbol is the hash/slash (#).
Now I'd always thought that the US usage had that as the 'number' symbol as in "issue #4 is now available"2. Well, apparently it does.
It also gets used as and called a 'pound' symbol, but pounds avoir dupoir (lbs)rather than pounds sterling (£).
News to me, but now I know. While I'm sitting nibbling on a biscuit (cookie), texting on my mobile (cell) phone and I have to press the pound (£) symbol I actually have to use the hash (#) and pretend it's a pound (£).
Simple.
1Which in Word is a nice little double musical note, but on this browser, just a little box. Why don't they make these things read across properly? Grumble..
2I was going to make up a fictitious sample publication name, but they all came out rude or bizarre or both, so I decided that might be too revealing of my deeper psyche...
