{"id":36790,"date":"2014-11-05T00:10:25","date_gmt":"2014-11-05T08:10:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=36790"},"modified":"2014-11-04T18:34:01","modified_gmt":"2014-11-05T02:34:01","slug":"origin-hashtag-symbol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2014\/11\/origin-hashtag-symbol\/","title":{"rendered":"The Origin of the Hashtag Symbol"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"pf-content\"><div class=\"highlighter\">In this video by <a href=\"http:\/\/hankgreen.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Hank Green<\/a>, he addresses the origin of the hashtag symbol and the many names it&#8217;s had over the years. If you like this video, be sure and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCGaVdbSav8xWuFWTadK6loA\" target=\"_blank\">subscribe to the Green brother&#8217;s YouTube channel here<\/a>.<\/div>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HEVOM0VycMI\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>If you liked this video, you might also enjoy:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2013\/06\/how-xoxo-came-to-mean-hugs-and-kisses\/\" target=\"_blank\">How \u201cXOXO\u201d Came to Mean \u201cHugs and Kisses\u201d<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2010\/06\/the-iconic-live-long-and-prosper-hand-gesture-was-originally-a-jewish-sign\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Iconic \u201cLive Long and Prosper\u201d Hand Gesture Was Originally a Jewish Sign<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2010\/06\/where-the-dollar-sign-comes-from\/\" target=\"_blank\">Where the Dollar Sign Comes From<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2011\/06\/where-the-ampersand-symbol-and-name-came-from\/\" target=\"_blank\">Where the Ampersand Symbol and Name Came From<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span id=\"bonusfacts\">Bonus<\/span> Facts:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If you&#8217;re wondering why the symbol was called &#8220;hashtag&#8221; in the first place, the generally accepted name of the # symbol when referring to computer programming usage (often used as a comment sign, particularly in scripting languages), is &#8220;hash&#8221;. So in social media when tagging something using the hash sign, it was natural to call the grouping of the symbol with a tag a &#8220;hash tag&#8221;. This has since extended to the symbol itself sometimes being called this.\u00a0 As for the first documented instance of someone calling such a tag &#8220;hash tag&#8221;, it appears to have been in an August 26, 2007 blog post by &#8220;Web Anthropologist&#8221; Stowe Boyd, titled &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/stoweboyd.com\/post\/39877198249\/hash-tags-twitter-groupings\" target=\"_blank\">Hash Tags = Twitter Groupings<\/a>&#8220;.<\/li>\n<li>An international standards body officially named the # symbol \u201csquare\u201d in 1989.\u00a0 This is why the British Post Office and British Telecom call the symbol a square.<\/li>\n<li>The # symbol is also commonly called a \u201csharp\u201d in such places as Japan and others.\u00a0 In many places, this is as a result of the similarity to the musical sharp symbol (\u266f).<\/li>\n<li>In the U.S. patent in 1973 where \u201coctothorpe\u201d first appears, the asterisk (*) was referred to as a &#8220;sextile&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>Microsoft\u2019s programming language C\u266f (pronounced C-sharp) was once often mispronounced \u201cC hash\u201d or \u201cC pound\u201d.\u00a0 The confusion comes from the fact that the symbol following the C is supposed to be the musical sharp symbol (\u266f). But given the # symbol&#8217;s prevalence in various programming languages, many programmers initially thought it was meant to be the \u201chash\u201d symbol, until corrected.<\/li>\n<li>In Malaysia, the # symbol is commonly called a \u201chex\u201d.<\/li>\n<li>In scripting languages where a # is followed by a ! (as in #!), this is known as a \u201cshabang\u201d (sometimes spelled \u201csh-bang\u201d or \u201cshebang\u201d) and is typically used to tell the operating system what program to use to run some script.\u00a0 The former name of \u201cshabang\u201d is thought to have come from the contractions \u201cSHArp bang\u201d or \u201chaSH bang\u201d; another popular theory is that it comes from the fact that the default shell \u201csh\u201d is usually invoked with \u201cshebang\u201d, hence \u201csh-bang\u201d and eventually \u201cshabang\u201d.\u00a0 The latter \u201cbang\u201d name for the exclamation point is traditional Unix jargon.<\/li>\n<li>In Chess notation, the # symbol placed after a move indicates a checkmate.\u00a0 This replaced the more traditional \u2021 symbol.<\/li>\n<li>The compound tone generated on a phone by pressing the # key is a mixing of 941 Hz and 1477 Hz.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this video by Hank Green, he addresses the origin of the hashtag symbol and the many names it&#8217;s had over the years. If you like this video, be sure and subscribe to the Green brother&#8217;s YouTube channel here. If you liked this video, you might also enjoy: How \u201cXOXO\u201d Came to Mean \u201cHugs and Kisses\u201d The Iconic \u201cLive Long [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36791,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2957],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-educational_videos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36790"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36792,"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36790\/revisions\/36792"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}