version 2.5



SINGLE CHARACTERS

Space blank, ghost (NetHack)

! Exclamation point exclamation (mark), (ex)clam, excl, wow, hey, boing, bang, shout, yell, shriek, pling, factorial, ball-bat, smash, cuss, store, potion (NetHack) , not (UNIX) (C) , dammit (UNIX)

" Quotation mark (double) quote, dirk, literal mark, rabbit ears, double ping, double glitch, amulet (NetHack) , web (NetHack) , inverted commas

# Crosshatch pound, pound sign, number, number sign, sharp, octothorpe, hash, (garden) fence, crunch, mesh, hex, flash, grid, pig-pen, tictactoe, scratch (mark), (garden) gate, hak, oof, rake, sink (NetHack) , corridor (NetHack) , unequal, punch mark

$ Dollar Sign dollar, cash, currency symbol, buck, string, escape, ding, big-money, gold (NetHack) , Sonne

% Percent Sign percent, mod (C) , shift-5, double-oh-seven, grapes, food (NetHack)

& Ampersand and, amper, address (C) , shift-7, andpersand, snowman, bitand (C) , donald duck, daemon (NetHack) , background (UNIX) , pretzel

' Apostrophe (single) quote, tick, prime, irk, pop, spark, glitch, lurker above (NetHack)

() Parentheses parens, round brackets, bananas, ears, bowlegs

( Left Parenthesis (open) paren, so, wane, parenthesee, open, sad, tool (NetHack)

) Right Parenthesis already, wax, unparenthesee, close (paren), happy, thesis, weapon (NetHack)

+ Plus Sign plus, add, cross, and, intersection, door (NetHack) , spellbook (NetHack)

, Comma tail, trapper (NetHack)

- Hyphen minus (sign), dash, dak, option, flag, negative (sign), worm, bithorpe

. Period dot, decimal (point), (radix) point, spot, full stop, put, floor (NetHack)

/ Slash stroke, virgule, solidus, slant, diagonal, over, slat, slak, across, compress, reduce, replicate, spare, divided-by, wand (NetHack) , forward slash, shilling

: Colon two-spot, double dot, dots, chameleon (NetHack)

; Semicolon semi, hybrid, giant eel (NetHack) , go-on

<> Angle Brackets angles, funnels, brokets, pointy brackets, widgets

< Less Than less, read from (UNIX) , from (UNIX) , in (UNIX) , comesfrom (UNIX) , crunch, sucks, left chevron, open pointy (brack[et]), bra, upstairs (NetHack) , west, (left|open) widget

> Greater Than more, write to (UNIX) , into/toward (UNIX) , out (UNIX) , gazinta (UNIX) , zap, blows, right chevron, closing pointy (brack[et]), ket, downstairs (NetHack) , east, (right|close) widget

= Equal Sign equal(s), gets, becomes, quadrathorpe, half-mesh, ring (NetHack)

? Question Mark question, query, whatmark, what, wildchar (UNIX) , huh, ques, kwes, quiz, quark, hook, scroll (NetHack) , interrogation point

@ At Sign at, each, vortex, whirl, whirlpool, cyclone, snail, ape (tail), cat, snable-a, trunk-a, rose, cabbage, Mercantile symbol, strudel, fetch, shopkeeper (NetHack) , human (NetHack) , commercial-at, monkey (tail)

[] Brackets square brackets, U-turns, edged parentheses

[ Left Bracket bracket, bra, (left) square (brack[et]), opensquare, armor (NetHack)

] Right Bracket unbracket, ket, right square (brack[et]), unsquare, close, mimic (NetHack)

\ Backslash reversed virgule, bash, (back)slant, backwhack, backslat, escape (UNIX) , backslak, bak, scan, expand, opulent throne (NetHack) , slosh, slope, blash

^ Circumflex caret, carrot, (top)hat, cap, uphat, party hat, housetop, up arrow, control, boink, chevron, hiccup, power, to-the(-power), fang, sharkfin, and, xor (C) , wok, trap (NetHack) , pointer, pipe (UNIX) , upper-than

_ Underscore underline, underbar, under, score, backarrow, flatworm, blank, chain (NetHack) , gets, dash, sneak

` Grave (grave/acute) accent, backquote, left/open quote, backprime, unapostrophe, backspark, birk, blugle, backtick, push, backglitch, backping, execute, boulder (NetHack) , rock (NetHack) , blip

{ Left Brace brace, curly, leftit, embrace, openbrace, begin (C) , fountain (NetHack)

} Right Brace unbrace, uncurly, rytit, bracelet, close, end (C) , a pool (NetHack)

| Vertical Bar pipe (UNIX) , pipe to (UNIX) , vertical line, broken line, bar, or (C) , bitor (C) , vert, v-bar, spike, to (UNIX) , gazinta (UNIX) , thru (UNIX) , pipesinta (UNIX) , tube, mark, whack, gutter, wall (NetHack)

~ Tilde twiddle, tilda, tildee, wave, squiggle, swung dash, approx, wiggle, enyay, home (UNIX) , worm, not (C)









MULTIPLE CHARACTER STRINGS

!? interrobang (one overlapped character)

/* slashterix (C) , slashaster

<- gets

<< left-shift (C) , double smaller

>> appends (UNIX) , cat-astrophe, right-shift (C) , double greater

-> arrow (C) , pointer to (C) , hiccup (C)

#! sh'bang, wallop

&& and (C) , and-and (C) , amper-amper, succeeds-then (UNIX)

|| or (C) , or-or (C) , fails-then (UNIX)









NOTES

! bang comes from old card punch phenom where punching ! code made a loud noise; however, this pronunciation is used in the (non- computerized) publishing and typesetting industry in the U.S. too, so ...

Alternatively it could have come from comic books, where the words each character utters are shown in a "balloon" near that character's head. When one character shoots another, it is common to see a balloon pointing at the barrel of the gun to denote that the gun had been fired, not merely aimed. That balloon contained the word "!" -- hence, "!" == "Bang!"

! store from FORTH

! dammit as in "quit, dammit!" while exiting vi and hoping one hasn't clobbered a file too badly

# octothorpe from Bell System (orig. octalthorpe)

# unequal e.g. Modula-2

$ string from BASIC

$ escape from TOPS-10

$ Sonne In the socialist countries, they used and are using all kinds of IBM clones (hardware + software). It was a common practice just to rename everything (IBM 360 → ESER 1040, etc...).

Of course the "dollar" sign had to be renamed - it became the "international currency symbol" which looks like a circle with 4 rays spreading from it: ¤

Because it looks like a (small) shining sun, in the German Democratic Republic it was usually called "Sonne" (sun).

& donald duck from the Danish "Anders And", which means "Donald Duck"

* splat from DEC "spider" glyph

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

* funny button at Pacific Bell, * was referred to by employees as the "funny button", which did not please management at all when it became part of the corporate logo of Pacific Telesis, the holding company...

*/ times-div from FORTH

= quadrathorpe half an octothorpe

- bithorpe half a quadrathorpe (So what's a monothorpe?)

. put Victor Borge's Phonetic Punctuation which dates back to the middle 1950's

/ across APL

/ compress APL

/ reduce APL

/ replicate APL

/ shilling from the British currency symbol

:= becomes e.g. Pascal

; go-on Algol68

< left chevron from the military: worn vertically on the sleeve to signify rating

< bra from quantum mechanics

<> unequal e.g. Pascal

> right chevron see "< left chevron"

> ket from quantum mechanics

@ snable-a from Danish; may translate as "trunk-a"

@ strudel as in Austrian apple cake

@ fetch from FORTH

\ scan APL

\ expand APL

^ and from formal logic

^ pointer from PASCAL

^ upper-than cf. > and <

_ gets some alternative representation of underscore resembles a backarrow

_ dash as distinct from '-' == minus

` execute from shell command substitution

{} Tuborgs from advertizing for well-known Danish beverage

{} curly chevr. see "< left chevron"

{} hitchcocks from the old Alfred Hitchcock show, with the stylized profile of the man

{} chippendale brackets after Chippendale chairs

| broken line EBCDIC has two vertical bars, one solid and one broken.

~ enyay from the Spanish n-tilde