How do I pronounce vi , or ! , or /* , or ...? You can start a very long and pointless discussion by wondering about this topic on the net. Some people say vye, some say vee-eye (the vi manual suggests this) and some Roman numerologists say six. How you pronounce vi has nothing to do with whether or not you are a true Unix wizard.
Similarly, you'll find that some people pronounce char as care, and that there are lots of ways to say # or /* or ! or tty or /etc. No one pronunciation is correct - enjoy the regional dialects and accents.
SINGLE CHARACTERS | ||
---|---|---|
Space | blank | |
! | Exclamation point | exclamation (mark), (ex)clam, excl, wow, hey, boing, bang, shout, yell, shriek, pling, factorial, ball-bat, smash, cuss, store, not (UNIX) (C), dammit (UNIX) |
" | Quotation mark (double) | (double) quote, dirk, literal mark, rabbit ears, double ping, double glitch, inverted commas |
' | Typewriter Apostrophe | Quotation mark (single), tick, prime, irk, pop, spark, glitch. (U+0027) |
’ | Apostrophe | Quotation mark (single), Right Single Quotation Mark , smart quote, curly apostrophe, tick, prime, irk, pop, spark, glitch. (U+2019) |
` | Grave | (grave/acute) accent, backquote, left/open quote, backprime, unapostrophe, backspark, birk, blugle, backtick, push, backglitch, backping, execute, blip |
# | Octothorpe | hash, crosshatch, pound, pound sign, number, number sign, octothorpe, (garden) fence, crunch, mesh, hex, flash, grid, pig-pen, tictactoe, scratch (mark), (garden) gate, hak, oof, rake, unequal, punch mark. Microsoft call this character "sharp" as with C#, J# (but it is not the musical SHARP ♯ which has vertical lines and oblique horizontal lines.) |
$ | Dollar Sign | dollar, cash, currency symbol, buck, string, escape, ding, big-money, Sonne |
% | Percent Sign | percent, mod (C), shift-5, double-oh-seven, grapes |
& | Ampersand | and, amper, address (C), shift-7, andpersand, snowman, bitand (C), donald duck, background (UNIX), pretzel |
* | Asterisk | star, splat, spider, aster, times, wildcard (UNIX), gear, dingle, (Nathan) Hale, bug, twinkle, funny button, pine cone, glob (UNIX) |
@ | At Sign | at, each, vortex, whirl, whirlpool, cyclone, snail, ape (tail), cat, snable-a, trunk-a, rose, cabbage, Mercantile symbol, strudel, fetch, commercial-at, monkey (tail) |
() | Parentheses | parens, brackets or round brackets (UK usage), bananas, ears, bowlegs |
( | Opening Parenthesis | (open) paren, so, wane, parenthesee, open, open bracket (UK usage), sad |
) | Closing Parenthesis | already, wax, unparenthesee, close (paren), close bracket (UK usage), happy, thesis |
[ ] | Brackets | square brackets, U-turns, edged parentheses |
[ | Left Bracket | bracket, bra, (left) square (brack[et]), opensquare |
] | Right Bracket | unbracket, ket, right square (brack[et]), unsquare, close |
{ } | Braces | curly braces, squiggly braces, curly brackets, squiggle brackets, Tuborgs, ponds, curly chevrons, squirrly braces, hitchcocks, chippendale brackets |
{ | Left Brace | brace, curly, leftit, embrace, openbrace, begin (C) |
} | Right Brace | unbrace, uncurly, rytit, bracelet, close, end (C) |
< > | Angle Brackets | angles, funnels, brokets, pointy brackets, widgets |
< | Less Than | less, read from (UNIX), from (UNIX), in (UNIX), comesfrom (UNIX), crunch, sucks, left chevron, open pointy (brack[et]), bra, west, (left|open) widget |
> | Greater Than | more, write to (UNIX), into/toward (UNIX), out (UNIX), gazinta (UNIX), zap, blows, right chevron, closing pointy (brack[et]), ket, east, (right|close) widget |
+ | Plus Sign | plus, add, cross, and, intersection |
, | Comma | tail |
- | Hyphen | minus (sign), dash, dak, tac (Military), option, flag, negative (sign), worm, bithorpe |
_ | Underscore | underline, underbar, under, score, backarrow, flatworm, blank, gets, dash, sneak |
~ | Tilde | twiddle, tilda, tildee, wave, squiggle, swung dash, swan hyphen (UK usage), approx, wiggle, enyay, home (UNIX), worm, not (C) |
. | Period | dot, decimal (point), (radix) point, spot, full stop, put |
/ | Slash | stroke, virgule, solidus, slant, diagonal, over, slat, slak, across, compress, reduce, replicate, spare, divided-by, forward slash, shilling |
: | Colon | two-spot, double dot, dots |
; | Semicolon | semi, hybrid, go-on |
= | Equal Sign | equal(s), gets, becomes, quadrathorpe, half-mesh |
? | Question Mark | question, query, whatmark, what, wildchar (UNIX), huh, ques, kwes, quiz, quark, hook, interrogation point |
\ | Backslash | reversed virgule, bash, (back)slant, backwhack, backslat, escape (UNIX), backslak, bak, scan, expand, slosh, slope, blash, (whack =microsoft corp. speak) |
^ | Circumflex | caret, carrot, (top)hat, cap, uphat, party hat, housetop, up arrow, control, boink, chevron, hiccup, power, to-the(-power), fang, sharkfin, and, xor (C), wok, pointer, pipe (UNIX), upper-than |
| | Vertical Bar | pipe (UNIX), pipe to (UNIX), vertical line, broken line, bar, or (C), bitor (C), vert, v-bar, spike, to (UNIX), gazinta (UNIX), thru (UNIX), pipesinta (UNIX), tube, mark, whack, gutter |
MULTIPLE CHARACTER STRINGS | ||
!? | interrobang (one overlapped character) | |
*/ | asterslash (C), times-div | |
/* | slashterix (C), slashaster | |
:= | becomes, Walrus operator (Python) | |
<- | gets | |
<< | left-shift (C), double smaller | |
<> | unequal, “box” (Ada language generics). | |
>> | appends (UNIX), cat-astrophe, right-shift (C), double greater | |
-> | arrow (C), pointer to (C), hiccup (C) | |
#! | shebang, sh'bang, wallop | |
\!* | bash-bang-splat | |
() | nil | |
&& | and (C), and-and (C), amper-amper, succeeds-then (UNIX) | |
|| | or (C), or-or (C), fails-then (UNIX) | |
NOTES | ||
! | bang | From comic books, where the words each character utters are shown in a "balloon" near that character's head. When one character shoots another, it is common to see a balloon pointing at the barrel of the gun to denote that the gun had been fired, not merely aimed. That balloon often contained the word "Bang!" – hence, "!" == "Bang!" Alternatively it could have come from old card punch phenomenon where punching ! code made a loud noise; (this is likely apocryphal as the EBCDIC code for '!' is 5A) however, this pronunciation is used in the (non-computerized) publishing and typesetting industry in the U.S. too. |
! | store | From FORTH |
! | dammit | as in "quit, dammit!" while exiting vi and hoping one hasn't clobbered a file too badly |
# | octothorpe | Otherwise known as the numeral sign... In cartography, it is also a symbol for village: eight fields around a central square, and this is the source of its name. Octothorp means eight fields ~ Robert Bringhurst (The Elements of Typographic Style (3rd edition, 2004 p314)
A related term (also involving Octal/8) is octalthorpe (Bell System) |
# | unequal | e.g. Modula-2 |
$ | string | From BASIC |
$ | escape | From TOPS-10 |
$ | Sonne | In the socialist countries, they used and are using all kinds of IBM clones (hardware + software). It was a common practice just to rename everything (IBM 360 → ESER 1040, etc...). Of course the "dollar" sign had to be renamed - it became the "international currency symbol" which looks like a circle with 4 rays spreading from it: ¤ Because it looks like a (small) shining sun, in the German Democratic Republic it was usually called "Sonne" (sun). |
& | donald duck | From the Danish "Anders And", which means "Donald Duck" |
* | splat | From DEC "spider" glyph |
* | Nathan Hale | "I have but one asterisk for my country." |
* | funny button | At Pacific Bell, * was referred to by employees as the "funny button", which did not please management at all when it became part of the corporate logo of Pacific Telesis, the holding company... |
*/ | times-div | From FORTH |
= | quadrathorpe | Half an octothorpe |
- | bithorpe | Half a quadrathorpe (So what's a monothorpe?) |
. | put | Victor Borge's Phonetic Punctuation which dates back to the middle 1950's |
/ | across | APL |
/ | compress | APL |
/ | reduce | APL |
/ | replicate | APL |
/ | shilling | From the old British currency symbol |
:= | becomes | e.g. Pascal |
; | go-on | Algol68 |
< | left chevron | From the military: worn vertically on the sleeve to signify rating |
< | bra | From quantum mechanics |
<> | unequal | In many languages e.g. Pascal. In Ada language generics “box” <> is commonly used as a wildcard or default placeholder. |
> | right chevron | From the military: worn vertically on the sleeve to signify rank |
> | ket | From quantum mechanics |
@ | snable-a | From Danish; may translate as "trunk-a" |
@ | trunk-a | "trunk" = "elephant nose" |
@ | strudel | as in Austrian apple cake |
@ | fetch | From FORTH |
\ | scan | APL |
\ | expand | APL |
^ | and | From formal logic |
^ | pointer | From PASCAL |
^ | upper-than | cf. > and < |
_ | gets | Some alternative representation of underscore resembles a backarrow |
_ | dash | As distinct from '-' == minus |
' | execute | From shell command substitution |
{} | Tuborgs | From advertizing for well-known Danish beverage |
{} | curly chevr. | See "< left chevron" |
{} | hitchcocks | From the old Alfred Hitchcock show, with the stylized profile of the man |
{} | chippendale brackets | After Chippendale chairs |
| | broken line | EBCDIC has two vertical bars, one solid and one broken. |
~ | enyay | From the Spanish n-tilde Ñ |
() | nil | LISP |
Version 2.92, 2021 added Microsoft # & Ada Box.
Version 2.93, 2022 added Some British usage and notes about '!'.
ASCII Table
The Original Jargon File
How to pronounce "Linux"