Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Where does HASH TAG come from?

This is topic Where does HASH TAG come from? in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

To visit this topic, use this URL:
https://ft-forum.com/ft/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=006850

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 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.

Posted by Dustin Mitchell (Member # 372) on 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.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 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.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 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.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 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 #...

Posted by Jarod Reddig (Member # 6363) on 05-10-2013, 03:55 AM:

Ive always thought of it as the number sign too.

Posted by Christos Mitsakis (Member # 143) on 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.

Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 05-10-2013, 09:50 AM:

I always called it the tick-tac-toe sign.

Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 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.

Posted by Robert E. Allen (Member # 1351) on 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.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 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! [Smile]

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 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.

[Smile]

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 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! [Razz]

Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 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!"

Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 05-10-2013, 03:17 PM:

And another term I've heard for the asterisk... "Butthole". [Roll Eyes]

Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 05-10-2013, 03:38 PM:

quote: Paul Mayer
And another term I've heard for the asterisk... "Butthole".

Yeah. As in:

(_*_)

...And it gets worse than that. I'll spare you.

Posted by Michael Brown (Member # 890) on 05-10-2013, 05:55 PM:

Full wikipedia artical about this symbol:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_symbol

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 05-10-2013, 08:13 PM:

quote: Mike Blakesley
Isn't "hash" a computer programming term for managing data? I think that's probably where the "hashtag" term originated.

A hash function is a function that creates a fixed length (usually a much shorter) representation of a variable length data set. The result is often called a hash.

Hash functions are often used for cryptographic purposes, like storing encrypted/hashed passwords, but also to check the validity of a certain data set.

Yet, I don't think the symbol # is related to those hash functions, although the "hash" symbol itself is very often used in computing. Most commonly as a starting indicator of a "single line" comment in many programming and scripting languages.