How do you say ~!@#$%

#keyboard

I had a random thought the other day regarding the characters on the keyboard that us developers use every day. I realized that we probably have very different names and expectations of what each of them are used for, or even call them.

So I did a quick survey of some non-developer friends and family and here's what I came up with:

Character	Me	Other	Others I've heard
~	Tilde	Tildee, Approximately	Squiggle
!	Exclamation	Make a Point	Not, Bang
@	At		Kill
#	Pound	Number, Hashtag
$	Dollar	Money, "String" in Excel
%	Percent		Mod, Modulus
^	Carrot	Accent
&	Ampersand	And
*	Asterisk	Star, "Times" in Excel	Splat
(	Open Paren	Left Paren, Quotation Mark
)	Close Paren	Right Paren, Other end of Question Mark
_	Underscore	Underline	Lodash
+	Plus

I've combined references to "point", "mark" and "sign". They seem to be used interchangeably.

Which did I miss? What do you call these characters, and what do you expect them to do? I'll update the table as you comment

Top comments (1)

Valentin Baca • Apr 28 '20 • Edited

`    tick, backquote
#    hash
%    mod, remainder
^    xor ("ex-or"), hat
&    (in C) "address of" 
*    (in C) "pointer to", "pointer of", "array of", "dereference", "what x points to" , times (in Math), "any number of" (in Regex)
+    "one or more of" (in Regex)
-    dash, hyphen, minus
[    open square bracket
]    closed square bracket
[0]    "index zero"
{    open/left curly bracket, curly brace
}    close/right curly bracket, curly brace
<    less than, open/left angle bracket
>    greater than, close/right angle bracket 
.    dot, period, stop
?  question mark
|    pipe, vertical bar
\    backslash
/    slash, forward slash
,    comma

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How do you say ~!@#$%

Top comments (1)

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