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Author Topic: Where does HASH TAG come from? Frank Angel Film God Posts: 5305 From: Brooklyn NY USA Registered: Dec 1999 posted 05-09-2013 09:54 PM                        From whence comes this "new" word called hashtag and why did we need new terminology for something that's been around for eons? It's had its own button on the telephone for ages and longer than that, its been married to the number 3 on hundreds of millions of typewriters, but all of a sudden, evidently we go mute when confronted with the need to verbalize what that thing is on top of the 3 key! Up until twitter, did everyone have to start miming in order to communicate what we were looking? We had no word for it for over a century and just now some idiot (at a company that named itself twitter mind you), felt compelled to come up with new nomenclature for it? And so, scratching his head and his ass at the same time, he came up with hashtag...that was the best he could do? Does anyone know the backstory to this, or it is just the arrogance of the cyber geeks who think, "Hey, we are creating a nonsense "social media" that no one needs and we'll be making making umpteen millions of dollars in the process, so we can make up any damn words we want." Yah...THAT kind of arrogance. Just wondering.  |  IP: Logged Dustin Mitchell Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1865 From: Mondovi, WI, USA Registered: Mar 2000 posted 05-09-2013 10:22 PM                     According to Wikipedia, 'hashtag' is not actually the new name for the familiar #, rather it is the term for the phrase it precedes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashtag quote: A hashtag is a word or a phrase prefixed with the symbol #,[1][2] a form of metadata tag. Short messages on microblogging social networking services such as Twitter, Tout, identi.ca, Tumblr, Instagram, or Google+ may be tagged by including one or more with multiple words concatenated, e.g.: #Wikipedia is an #encyclopedia Hashtags provide a means of grouping such messages, since one can search for the hashtag and get the set of messages that contain it.  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 05-10-2013 12:26 AM                        That might be true, but thanks to: (1) people being stupid; (2) movies like "Olympus Has Fallen" referring to the symbol as a 'hashtag,' and (3) the symbol itself slightly resembling the letter H, we're probably eventually going to be stuck with it being called that. It'll always be a "pound sign" to me -- but this is coming from a person who still refers to going upstairs and turning on the digital projector equipment as "threading." Old habits do indeed die hard.  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 05-10-2013 01:28 AM                        I always called it the "number sign," although "octothorpe" has a nice ring to it as well. "Hash" is another somewhat long-standing term for the symbol. It is not a new creation. This is sort of like how the "*" symbol is known variously as the "star," "splat," "sextile," or "asterisk." Same thing, different terms.  |  IP: Logged Marcel Birgelen Film God Posts: 3357 From: Maastricht, Limburg, Netherlands Registered: Feb 2012 posted 05-10-2013 02:04 AM                     I've been used to calling the # symbol just "hash" (or sometimes "pound sign") and the * symbol "asterisk". Hashtag is the actual tag, as introduced by twitter, it is NOT the symbol #...  |  IP: Logged Jarod Reddig Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 513 From: Hays, Ks Registered: Jun 2011 posted 05-10-2013 03:55 AM                     Ive always thought of it as the number sign too.  |  IP: Logged Christos Mitsakis Expert Film Handler Posts: 242 From: Ag.Paraskevi, ATHENS, GREECE Registered: Sep 1999 posted 05-10-2013 05:06 AM                     It is also called the "sharp" (diese) symbol, a term borrowed from the same symbol of music notation. C.  |  IP: Logged Mitchell Dvoskin Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1869 From: West Milford, NJ, USA Registered: Jan 2001 posted 05-10-2013 09:50 AM                     I always called it the tick-tac-toe sign.  |  IP: Logged Manny Knowles "What are these things and WHY are they BLUE???" Posts: 4247 From: Bloomington, IN, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 05-10-2013 10:10 AM                     I think it depends on the function of the symbol. When I worked at Pan Am, we used it as a "pound" symbol to denote weight. If I'm referring to, say, a surround speaker, I might use it as the "number" sign -- as in surround speaker #2. IIRC, in HTML code, it denotes a section of a page. And then there is the "hashtag" function. So, if you're talking about a hashtag and you insist on calling it the "pound" symbol, you're just being wrong. Same thing if someone came to me and said, "I believe surround speaker hashtag 2 is busted." Or if I told the captain of a 747 that he had 180 "numbers" of cargo in hold "hashtag" one. That would be VERY wrong. And, yes, there's also the musical function to denote sharps. But that's just my rotten opinion. As for "splat", the kids at USC used that term to refer to the "Command" key on Mac computers.  |  IP: Logged Robert E. Allen Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1078 From: Checotah, Oklahoma Registered: Jul 2002 posted 05-10-2013 10:52 AM                     I always called it the number sign. Then people started calling it the pound sign. Now "hashtag"? The English language (American version)is getting away from me. And I don't think it's just because I failed English in the 8th grade. In spite of that I spent 28 years as a radio broadcaster. Go figure.  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 05-10-2013 12:06 PM                        Isn't "hash" a computer programming term for managing data? I think that's probably where the "hashtag" term originated. I totally forgot about # being the "number" sign. I guess it's no different from "-" being called a minus, a dash, and a hyphen (and yes, I know there are ASCII characters for all three, but you get my drift). At least everybody would probably agree that " is a quote mark!  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 05-10-2013 12:14 PM                        Actually, " is an "inch mark," used to designate measurement, or a "second mark," used to designate time. Proper quotation marks are curled to indicate the beginning and end of the quoted text.  |  IP: Logged Frank Angel Film God Posts: 5305 From: Brooklyn NY USA Registered: Dec 1999 posted 05-10-2013 12:27 PM                        I think it annoys me only because twitter tweeters use and think it makes them cool. Not to mention I reeeeally don't like twitter to the nth degree...and there's another one for ya!  |  IP: Logged Manny Knowles "What are these things and WHY are they BLUE???" Posts: 4247 From: Bloomington, IN, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 05-10-2013 02:10 PM                     I live in a college town, so I'm surrounded by young people. They actually SAY "hashtag" to each other in conversation. For example, little Johnny says something like, "Thomas is looking mighty hot today." And then, his pal Frankie might reply with, "Dude! Hashtag gay!"  |  IP: Logged Paul Mayer Oh get out of it Melvin, before it pulls you under! Posts: 3836 From: Albuquerque, NM Registered: Feb 2000 posted 05-10-2013 03:17 PM                        And another term I've heard for the asterisk... "Butthole".  |  IP: Logged

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