2014-04-26 10:52:28 -04:00
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ASCII
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2014-04-26 11:54:15 -04:00
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/askee/ , n. [originally an acronym (American Standard Code for Information
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Interchange) but now merely conventional] The predominant character set
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encoding of present-day computers. The standard version uses 7 bits for each
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character, whereas most earlier codes (including early drafts of ASCII prior
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to June 1961) used fewer. This change allowed the inclusion of lowercase
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letters a major win but it did not provide for accented letters or any other
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letterforms not used in English (such as the German sharp-S . or the
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ae-ligature which is a letter in, for example, Norwegian). It could be
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worse, though. It could be much worse. See EBCDIC to understand how. A
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history of ASCII and its ancestors is at
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http://www.wps.com/texts/codes/index.html. Computers are much pickier and
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less flexible about spelling than humans; thus, hackers need to be very
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precise when talking about characters, and have developed a considerable
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amount of verbal shorthand for them. Every character has one or more names
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some formal, some concise, some silly. Common jargon names for ASCII
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characters are collected here. See also individual entries for bang , excl ,
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open , ques , semi , shriek , splat , twiddle , and Yu-Shiang Whole Fish.
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This list derives from revision 2.3 of the Usenet ASCII pronunciation guide.
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Single characters are listed in ASCII order; character pairs are sorted in
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by first member. For each character, common names are given in rough order
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of popularity, followed by names that are reported but rarely seen; official
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ANSI/CCITT names are surrounded by brokets:. Square brackets mark the
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particularly silly names introduced by INTERCAL. The abbreviations l/r and
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o/c stand for left/right and open/close respectively. Ordinary
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parentheticals provide some usage information. ! Common: bang ; pling; excl;
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not; shriek; ball-bat; exclamation mark. Rare: factorial; exclam; smash;
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cuss; boing; yell; wow; hey; wham; eureka; [spark-spot]; soldier, control.
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Common: double quote; quote. Rare: literal mark; double-glitch; snakebite;
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quotation marks ; dieresis ; dirk; [rabbit-ears]; double prime. # Common:
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number sign; pound; pound sign; hash; sharp; crunch ; hex; [mesh]. Rare:
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grid; crosshatch; octothorpe; flash; square , pig-pen; tictactoe;
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scratchmark; thud; thump; splat. $ Common: dollar; dollar sign. Rare:
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currency symbol; buck; cash; bling; string (from BASIC); escape (when used
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as the echo of ASCII ESC); ding; cache; [big money]. % Common: percent;
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percent sign ; mod; grapes. Rare: [double-oh-seven]. Common: ampersand ;
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amp; amper; and, and sign. Rare: address (from C); reference (from C++);
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andpersand; bitand; background (from sh (1) ); pretzel. [INTERCAL called
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this ampersand ; what could be sillier?] ' Common: single quote; quote;
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apostrophe. Rare: prime; glitch; tick; irk; pop; [spark]; closing single
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quotation mark ; acute accent. ( ) Common: l/r paren; l/r parenthesis;
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left/right; open/close; paren/thesis; o/c paren; o/c parenthesis; l/r
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parenthesis; l/r banana. Rare: so/already; lparen/rparen; opening/closing
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parenthesis ; o/c round bracket, l/r round bracket, [wax/wane];
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parenthisey/unparenthisey; l/r ear. * Common: star; [ splat ]; asterisk.
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Rare: wildcard; gear; dingle; mult; spider; aster; times; twinkle; glob
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(see glob ); Nathan Hale. + Common: plus ; add. Rare: cross;
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[intersection]. , Common: comma. Rare: cedilla ; [tail]. - Common: dash;
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hyphen ; minus. Rare: [worm]; option; dak; bithorpe.. Common: dot; point;
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period ; decimal point. Rare: radix point; full stop; [spot]. / Common:
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slash; stroke; slant ; forward slash. Rare: diagonal; solidus; over; slak;
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virgule; [slat].
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