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13 ASCII Table - The Pronunciation Guide

The Pronunciation Guide

version 2.5

SINGLE CHARACTERS

Space blank, ghost (N etH ac k)

! Exclamation point exclamation (mark), (ex)clam, excl, wow, hey, boing, bang, shout, yell, shriek,
pling, factorial, ball-bat, smash, cuss, store, potion (N etH ac k), not (U N I X) (C ),
dammit (U N I X)

" Quotation mark (double) quote, dirk, literal mark, rabbit ears, double ping, double glitch, amulet
(N etH ac k), web (N etH ac k), 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 (N etH ac k), corridor (N etH ac k), unequal, punch
mark

$ Dollar Sign dollar, cash, currency symbol, buck, string, escape, ding, big-money, gold
(N etH ac k), Sonne

% Percent Sign percent, mod (C ), shift-5, double-oh-seven, grapes, food (N etH ac k)

& Ampersand and, amper, address (C ), shift-7, andpersand, snowman, bitand (C ), donald duck,
daemon (N etH ac k), background (U N I X), pretzel

' Apostrophe (single) quote, tick, prime, irk, pop, spark, glitch, lurker above (N etH ac k)

* Asterisk star, splat, spider, aster, times, wildcard (U N I X), gear, dingle, (Nathan) Hale,
bug, gem (N etH ac k), twinkle, funny button, pine cone, glob (U N I X)

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

( Left Parenthesis (open) paren, so, wane, parenthesee, open, sad, tool (N etH ac k)

) Right Parenthesis already, wax, unparenthesee, close (paren), happy, thesis, weapon (N etH ac k)

+ Plus Sign plus, add, cross, and, intersection, door (N etH ac k), spellbook (N etH ac k)

, Comma tail, trapper (N etH ac k)

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

. Period dot, decimal (point), (radix) point, spot, full stop, put, floor (N etH ac k)

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

: Colon two-spot, double dot, dots, chameleon (N etH ac k)

; Semicolon semi, hybrid, giant eel (N etH ac k), go-on

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

< Less Than less, read from (U N I X), from (U N I X), in (U N I X), comesfrom (U N I X), crunch, sucks,
left chevron, open pointy (brack[et]), bra, upstairs (N etH ac k), west, (left|open)

widget

> Greater Than more, write to (U N I X), into/toward (U N I X), out (U N I X), gazinta (U N I X), zap, blows,
right chevron, closing pointy (brack[et]), ket, downstairs (N etH ac k), east,
(right|close) widget

= Equal Sign equal(s), gets, becomes, quadrathorpe, half-mesh, ring (N etH ac k)

? Question Mark question, query, whatmark, what, wildchar (U N I X), huh, ques, kwes, quiz, quark,
hook, scroll (N etH ac k), 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 (N etH ac k),
human (N etH ac k), commercial-at, monkey (tail)

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

[ Left Bracket bracket, bra, (left) square (brack[et]), opensquare, armor (N etH ac k)
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[ Left Bracket bracket, bra, (left) square (brack[et]), opensquare, armor (N etH ac k)

] Right Bracket unbracket, ket, right square (brack[et]), unsquare, close, mimic (N etH ac k)

\ Backslash reversed virgule, bash, (back)slant, backwhack, backslat, escape (U N I X),

backslak, bak, scan, expand, opulent throne (N etH ac k), 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
(N etH ac k), pointer, pipe (U N I X), upper-than

_ Underscore underline, underbar, under, score, backarrow, flatworm, blank, chain (N etH ac k),
gets, dash, sneak

` Grave (grave/acute) accent, backquote, left/open quote, backprime, unapostrophe,

backspark, birk, blugle, backtick, push, backglitch, backping, execute, boulder
(N etH ac k), rock (N etH ac k), blip

{} Braces curly braces, squiggly braces, curly brackets, squiggle brackets, Tuborgs, ponds,
curly chevrons, squirrly braces, hitchcocks, chippendale brackets

{ Left Brace brace, curly, leftit, embrace, openbrace, begin (C ), fountain (N etH ac k)

} Right Brace unbrace, uncurly, rytit, bracelet, close, end (C ), a pool (N etH ac k)

| Vertical Bar pipe (U N I X), pipe to (U N I X), vertical line, broken line, bar, or (C ), bitor (C ), vert,
v-bar, spike, to (U N I X), gazinta (U N I X), thru (U N I X), pipesinta (U N I X), tube, mark,
whack, gutter, wall (N etH ac k)

~ Tilde twiddle, tilda, tildee, wave, squiggle, swung dash, approx, wiggle, enyay, home
(U N I X), worm, not (C )

MULTIPLE CHARACTER STRINGS

!? interrobang (one overlapped character)

*/ asterslash (C ), times-div

/* slashterix (C ), slashaster

:= becomes

<- gets

<< left-shift (C ), double smaller

<> unequal

>> appends (U N I X), cat-astrophe, right-shift (C ), double greater

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

#! sh'bang, wallop

\!* bash-bang-splat

() nil

&& and (C ), and-and (C ), amper-amper, succeeds-then (U N I X)

|| or (C ), or-or (C ), fails-then (U N I X)

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

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$ 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"

@ trunk-a "trunk" = "elephant nose"

@ strudel as in Austrian apple cake

@ fetch from FORTH

\ scan APL

\ expand APL

^ and from formal logic

^ pointer from PASC AL

^ 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 C hippendale chairs

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

~ enyay from the Spanish n-tilde

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() nil LISP

from ftp://ftp.wg.omron.co.jp/pub/unix-faq/docs/pronunciation-guide (19 Nov 1995)

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