Monday, January 21, 2008

English names for the characters in keyboard

~ tilde (sounds like til-da); be prepared to explain to computer-illiterate people saying "you know, the wave-shaped thingy"
! exclamation; commonly read as bang in case of #!/bin/sh
@ at
# pound; but commonly read as shee in case of #!/bin/sh, not sure why
$ dollar
% percent
^ caret; not many people know this word so be prepared to say "no, not carrot; it's the character above 6, an arrow pointing up"
& ampersand
* star; some read asterisk
( opening parenthesis (some may shorten it saying paren)
) closing parenthesis
_ underscore; once I heard people say underbar
+ plus
- minus; as symbol before arguments in commands, some people including me read dash, easier to say one syllable
= equals
` backtick or backquote
{ opening brace
} closing brace
[ opening bracket
] closing bracket
| pipe or vertical bar
\ backslash; be prepared to explain to some computer-illiterate people
: colon
; semicolon
" double quote
' single quote
< less than; some may read left angle bracket
> greater than
, comma
. dot; period if in English text
? question mark
/ slash or forward slash; some computer-illiterate people may be confused about / and \

space
(), [] and {} may also be called brackets in general. In that case, they specifically call [] square brackets and {} curly brackets. I never like this. Open and Closing may also be called left and right.