Re: Accents

> Date:         Tue, 8 Jan 2002 12:55:37 -0500
> From: John Cowan <jcowan@...>
>
> Stephen Mulraney wrote:
>
> > BTW, why do Americans call # ('hash', 'octothorp') the 'pound symbol' ??
>
> Because it used to be written *following* a number on bags full of
> stuff to indicate their weight in pounds, thus:  20# = 20 pounds
> weight.
My theory is that this use of the # sign is derived from the L B BAR
SYMBOL at U-2114, or a script version of it. Older Danish cookbooks
(and my grandmother's handwritten recipes) use a symbol for a pound
that looks like a script lowercase u with the right tail going back
across the legs --- that would be an intermediate stage.

BTW, John, would that be a candidate for encoding in Unicode? It
doesn't really look like either a NUMBER SIGN or an L B BAR SYMBOL.

I don't know how the symbol came to be used for a number sign, though.
Perhaps the current shape is really a merger of two different signs.

Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT marked)

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