https://blog.codinghorror.com/ascii-pronunciation-rules-for-programmers/ Coding Horror Logo Coding Horror programming and human factors 12 Jun 2008 ASCII Pronunciation Rules for Programmers As programmers, we deal with a lot of unusual keyboard characters that typical users rarely need to type, much less think about: $ # % {} * [] ~ & <> Even the characters that are fairly regularly used in everyday writing -- such as the humble dash, parens, period, and question mark -- have radically different meaning in programming languages. This is all well and good, but you'll eventually have to read code out loud to another developer for some reason. And then you're in an awkward position, indeed. How do you pronounce these unusual ASCII characters? We all do it, but we don't necessarily think much about the words we choose. I certainly hadn't thought much about this until yesterday, when I read the following comment left on Exploring Wide Finder: A friend sent me a Java code fragment in which he looped through printing "Thank You!" a million times (it was a response to a professor who had extended the deadline on a paper). I responded with a single line of Ruby to do the same, and a single line of Lisp. He wrote back: "Underscores, pipes, octothorpes, curly braces -- sheesh... I'll take a mild dose of verbosity if means I don't have to code something that looks like it's been zipped already!" What the heck is an octothorpe? I know this as the pound key, but that turns out to be a US-centric word; most other cultures know it as the hash key. I'm often surprised to hear what other programmers name their ASCII characters. Not that the words I personally use to identify my ASCII characters are any more correct, but there's far more variability than you'd expect considering the rigid, highly literal mindset of most programmers. Perhaps that's why I was so excited to discover the ASCII entry in The New Hacker's Dictionary, which Phil Glockner turned me on to. It's a fairly exhaustive catalog of the common names, rare names, and occasionally downright weird names that programmers associate with the ASCII characters sprinkled throughout their code. How many of these ASCII pronunciations do you recognize? Which ones are the "correct" ones in your shop? Common Names Rare Names ! exclamation mark factorial wow bang exclam hey pling smash wham excl cuss eureka not boing spark-spot shriek yell soldier control " quotation marks literal mark rabbit-ears quote double-glitch double prime double quote dieresis dirk # hash sharp grid tictactoe pound sign crunch crosshatch scratchmark number sign hex octothorpe thud pound mesh flash thump square splat pig-pen $ dollar sign currency symbol escape dollar buck ding cash cache string big money % percent sign double-oh-seven mod grapes & ampersand address amp reference amper andpersand and bitand and sign background pretzel ' apostrophe prime pop single quote glitch spark quote tick closing single irk quotation mark acute accent ( ) opening / closing parenthesis so/already left / right paren lparen/rparen left / right parenthesis opening/closing parenthesis left / right opening/closing round bracket open / close left/right round bracket open / close paren wax/wane paren / thesis parenthisey/unparenthisey left/right ear [ ] opening / closing bracket square / unsquare left / right bracket u turn / u turn back left / right square bracket bracket / unbracket { } opening / closing brace brace / unbrace open / close brace curly / uncurly left / right brace leftit / rytit left / right squiggly left / right squirrelly left / right squiggly bracket/brace embrace / bracelet left / right curly bracket/brace < > less / greater than from / into (or towards) bra / ket read from / write to left / right angle suck / blow left / right angle bracket comes-from / gozinta left / right broket in / out crunch / zap tic / tac angle / right angle * asterisk wildcard aster star gear times splat dingle twinkle mult glob spider Nathan Hale + plus cross add intersection , comma cedilla tail - dash worm hyphen option minus dak bithorpe . period radix point dot full stop point spot decimal point / slash diagonal stroke solidus slant over forward slash slak virgule slat \ backslash slosh bash hack backslant reverse slant whack backwhack reversed virgule escape backslat reverse slash : colon dots two-spot ; semicolon weenie semi hybrid pit-thwong = equals quadrathorpe gets half-mesh takes ? question mark quiz huh query whatmark hook ques what buttonhook wildchar hunchback @ at sign each snail at vortex ape strudel whorl cat whirlpool rose cyclone cabbage commercial at ^ circumflex xor sign caret chevron hat shark (or shark-fin) control to the uparrow fang pointer _ underline score underscore backarrow underbar skid under flatworm ` grave accent backprime back tick backquote backspark back glitch left quote unapostrophe push left single quote birk opening single quote open quote blugle quasiquote grave | bar vertical line or gozinta or-bar thru v-bar pipesinta pipe spike vertical bar ~ tilde approx squiggle wiggle twiddle swung dash not enyay sqiggle (sic) If you're curious about the derivation of some of the odder names here, there are an extensive set of footnotes (and even more possible pronunciations) at the ascii-table.com pronunciation guide. So the next time a programmer walks up to you and says, "oh, it's easy! Just type wax bang at hash buck grapes circumflex and splat wane", you'll know what they mean. Maybe. Next Don't Go Dark Previous Markov and You Written by Jeff Atwood Indoor enthusiast. Co-founder of Stack Overflow and Discourse. Disclaimer: I have no idea what I'm talking about. Find me here: http://twitter.com/codinghorror Resources * About Me * discourse.org * stackexchange.com * Learn Markdown * Recommended Reading * Subscribe in a reader * Subscribe via email Coding Horror has been continuously published since 2004 Copyright Jeff Atwood (c) 2022 Logo image (c) 1993 Steven C. McConnell As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Proudly published with Ghost *