That was a clue in the quick crossword in the Grauniad yesterday. I forget the clue's precise wording, but it was referring to that symbol, and the answer was four letters beginning with h. Might not be universal, but that's certainly its English name.

The # sign is "sharp" when talking about music. I have no idea why it's called a pound sign, but Sedri's £ sign seems to have more right to the name—the currency is called a "pound" after all. And, yes, improper semi-colon use is very annoying.

Though I'm not entirely sure why you'd want to include it in an editing guide. Regardless, they're two separate punctuation marks, regardless of visual similarities. Go ahead and note to your heart's content :)

(Also, I have that book! It's on the shelf right next to me. Heee.)

As for the "#", that makes the most sense, given that there seems to be no proper universal name for it. I always think of it as a 'grid'. "Number sign" is clear enough, especially as you have an example of the symbol right next to your first mentin - it wasn't as though I didn't know what you meant, after all.

("lbs" drives me crazy. So does "km/h" and "kph" and the like being used in written prose. Must... not... kill...!)

Yes, and I'm well aware it's not standard, just saying it's personal preference on my part (and thus doesn't contribute to any reason for changing it on the wiki).


I'd say that at least keeping it settled on individual pages is important- Imposter vs Impostor and all that. American English tells me that the first one is correct as well, and I wasn't pleased when someone changed the entire page so it was contrary to what the link said the page was for and then declared we had to change the link to match.

Because on one hand, TOS is American English. But on the other hand, a sizable amount of contribution to backstory, well, hS' stuff, is British English.

Additionally, I think that trying to force to stick with just one or the other the entire way through is only asking for trouble and is a bit against the whole 'spirit of the PPC' thing in the way of 'When did we start going "conform, conform to a single standard" etc', and would just rather prefer we try and keep to the same usage that was already predetermined by the page's original author and so on.

This is reaching the point of terrible rambling, but basically, it can be summed up as, "I'd feel weird if we went to British English spelling, etc for the pages on Jay, Acacia or the original series, or on any of the American writers' spinoffs and agents and I'd feel equally weird if we went to American English spelling and thingies for any of the British stuff and 'Reorganization' just isn't the same as 'Reorganisation'". If that makes sense.

Either way, it is late o clock.