Number sign

Not to be confused with the Numero sign (№), or Sharp (music) (♯).
#
Number sign
In UnicodeU+0023 # NUMBER SIGN (#)
Different from
Different fromU+266F ♯ MUSIC SHARP SIGN
U+2317 ⌗ VIEWDATA SQUARE
U+22D5 ⋕ EQUAL AND PARALLEL TO
U+4E95 井 CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-4E95 (Jingtian)
Related
See alsoU+00A3 £ POUND SIGN
U+2116 № NUMERO SIGN

The symbol # is known variously in English-speaking regions as the number sign,[1] hash,[2] or pound sign.[3] The symbol has historically been used for a wide range of purposes including the designation of an ordinal number and as a ligatured abbreviation for pounds avoirdupois – having been derived from the now-rare ℔.[4]

Since 2007, widespread usage of the symbol to introduce metadata tags on social media platforms has led to such tags being known as "hashtags",[5] and from that, the symbol itself is sometimes called a hashtag.[6]

The symbol is distinguished from similar symbols by its combination of level horizontal strokes and right-tilting vertical strokes.

  1. ^ "number sign". Oxford English Dictionary. Archived from the original on April 3, 2018.
  2. ^ "hash". Oxford English Dictionary. Archived from the original on December 31, 2017.
  3. ^ "pound sign". Oxford English Dictionary. Archived from the original on April 3, 2018. Retrieved 5 May 2016.
  4. ^ Houston, Keith (2013). "The Octothorpe". Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks. W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 41–57. ISBN 978-0-393-06442-1.
  5. ^ Piercy, Joseph (25 October 2013). "Part III: Symbnols of value, ownership and exchange". Symbols: A Universal Language. Michael OMara. pp. 84–85. ISBN 978-1-78243-073-5. Retrieved 4 October 2014.
  6. ^ "Why is the symbol # called the hashtag in Twitter?". The Britannica Dictionary. Archived from the original on 2022-09-23. Retrieved 2022-09-23.