{"id":69,"date":"2017-07-19T10:53:21","date_gmt":"2017-07-19T14:53:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/?p=69"},"modified":"2021-03-23T11:52:50","modified_gmt":"2021-03-23T15:52:50","slug":"octothorpe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racheldelafuente.com\/blog\/octothorpe\/","title":{"rendered":"#Octothorpe"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Hashtag<\/a>Everyone knows \u201chashtag\u201d. It\u2019s a fairly young word, but it has completely saturated the world. According to <\/span>Merriam-Webster<\/span><\/a>, it\u2019s first known use was in 2007 \u2014 it\u2019s probably safe to assume it was on Twitter. Merriam-Webster declared it the word of the day on 6\/23\/2014, the same year it was added to the dictionary. But what came before hashtag?<\/span><\/p>\n

The little symbol \u201c#\u201d that precedes our hashtags today has been known as a hash, square, pound sign, number sign, tic-tac-toe sign, noughts and crosses sign, and \u2014 my personal favorite \u2014 <\/span>octothorpe<\/b>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Octothorpe\u2019s history, however, isn\u2019t as definitive as it\u2019s cousin, \u201chashtag\u201d. By most accounts, workers at the Bell Telephone Laboratories invented the word sometime in the late 1960\u2019s or early 1970\u2019s.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is nearly universal agreement that the first half of the word refers to the eight lines projecting from the center square. The \u201c-thorpe\u201d however, remains a mystery, with far too many stories behind it to pinpoint the real one. Some of the most interesting include:<\/span><\/p>\n