ASCII Pronunciation Rules for Programmers

= can’t be “arrow”, because - is “arrow”

The “@” is also known as the asperand.

#| - hash pipe
= (a la lambda) - ‘goesta’

To a typographer, the typewriter quotation mark " is a dumb quote. The currency symbol is called a louse or sputnik, but it’s only a working placeholder when setting type in a font which lacks whatever local currency symbol.

Many Canadians are somewhat conscious of the French language, so a comma would never be mistakenly called a cedilla. Unicode actually has a stand-alone cedilla () but I suppose I just used it for the first time ever in this comment.

Canadians use (round) brackets and square brackets, like Brits do, although “parentheses” is seen more thanks to North American office culture. Likewise, many telephone voicemail systems now ask us to press the “pound sign,” even though my old mechanical typewriter had both # and .

The octothorp # is “eight fields” around the common pasture, and represents a village in cartography. The “quadrathorp(e)” = actually has three fields, so I’m guessing that it and “bithorp(e)” - must be back-formations from the mistaken assumption that a thorp is the terminal end of a stroke.

@Sacha, (“plus or minus”) is used to indicate a range, as in “60 10,” meaning 50 to 70. is the section sign, which goes with the pilcrow , or paragraph sign. It is used as a divider, and both are also sometimes used to mark footnotes, instead of raised numbers, along with the symbols * † ‡ #8214; .

Most of this predates computers, and isn’t used in a context where only ASCII has traditionally been available.

For those who wonder about the usage of ‘’ and ‘’:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_sign
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plus-minus_sign

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rautenzeichen
this page is about the ‘#’ sign - and it links
to the following page by Axel Beckert who at
his time as a student had been collecting
words for symbols:
http://fsinfo.cs.uni-sb.de/~abe/Bloedsinn/Teppich.html
enjoy! :slight_smile:

–Sven

Why is “back tick” in the rare column?

It’s probably the most commonly used word for this thing: `

It’s interesting doing programming in australia. Im currently doing a programming course at univesity and the Lecturer uses the correct Australian names, but us students us an all manner of different and wide ranging names. It can get quite confusing. I usually just call things “That squiggly thing there” or something similar.

@ = at the rate of

You can’t forget …

{} - Chicken Lips

{ Bob Hope Left (aka. Mr Bob Hope’s profile looking left)

} Bob Hope Right (aka. Mr Bob Hope’s profile looking right)

For those youngster, here’s Bob: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Hope

Just remember that DWORD rhymes with SWORD, and you’ll be okay…

"
You must not be an embedded designer. We use it all the time to invert bits. Very useful for masking all but certain bits in a byte.
e.g.
#define ENABLE_BIT 0x02
x = register ~ENABLE_BIT;

This will mask out all the bits except the Enable bit of “register”.
"

We usually write that as

ENABLE_BIT : constant Integer = 2#0000_0010#;

x := Register and not ENABLE_BIT;

or even easier (given a corresponding type declaration):

x := not Register.Enable_Bit;

Not much use for eccentric characters there, although I just showed one of the very few, so actually I don’t give a sh** what you call those. :stuck_out_tongue:

When I have to read out C-like-source loudely, this more sounds like this: “blabla this damn special char - you know which - bla bla - another special char - …” if the code makes a bit of sense, there’s even less ambiguity than one might think. :wink:

^@.@*
}"# |
-@$/
%
!( @|=
;`+$?^?
,#"~|)^G

hat less at less point at star
backbrace double base pound space bar
dash at cash and slash base rate
wow open tab at bar is great
semi backquote plus cash huh DEL
comma pound double tilde bar close BEL

In brazilian portuguese:

! exclamao (ponto de exclamao)
" aspas

sustenido, jogo-da-velha (tic-tac-toe), grade (grid)

$ cifro, dlar
% por cento, percentual
"e" comercial
’ apstrofo, aspas simples
() parnteses
[] colchetes
{} chaves
menor, maior

  • asterisco
  • mais
    , vrgula
  • menos, hfen
    . ponto
    / barra
    \ contra barra
    : dois pontos (two dots :S)
    ; ponto-e-vrgula
    = igual
    ? interrogao (ponto de interrogao)
    @ arroba
    ^ acento circunflexo
    _ I actually call it “underline” or “underscore”…
    ` crase
    | barra vertical, “pipe”
    ~ til

@JFred:

“Just remember that DWORD rhymes with SWORD, and you’ll be okay…”

Amen, brother! And “char” is homophonic with what you do to steaks if you leave them too long on the grill.

@Vinzent Hoefler:

“ENABLE_BIT : constant Integer = 2#0000_0010#;
x := Register and not ENABLE_BIT;”

Just because you’re writing embedded code doesn’t mean you have to introduce portability concerns unnecessarily. What happens when you want to use the same code with a CPU that’s differently endian?

= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundpole_fence

Norwegian: Skigard

:slight_smile:

Sometimes pronunciations are context specific:
e.g.
“x y” would be “x is less than y"
where
"some sort of markup/” would be “left angle bracket, some sort of markup, forward slash, right angle bracket”

"@Vinzent Hoefler:

“ENABLE_BIT : constant Integer = 2#0000_0010#;
x := Register and not ENABLE_BIT;”

Just because you’re writing embedded code doesn’t mean you have to introduce portability concerns unnecessarily. What happens when you want to use the same code with a CPU that’s differently endian?
Alex Chamberlain on June 13, 2008 09:08 AM
"

There is no portability issue. I’d get the same compile error, no matter of the compiler’s target. :wink:

I’m from a C+ background, not perl, and I call - arrow. I think I came up with that on my own, perhaps I picked it up from someone who had programmed in perl.
i have never heard ` called grave but that will be my new term for the backquote. Backquote is just too darn much of a mouthfull.
My favorite for “” is floppy bunny ears, which one of my non-programming friends came up with. It always makes me laugh when I hear that one.