An Introduction to ASCII

 

     The following article is from issue 325 of Fidonews, dated 30 June 1986.

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                          An Introduction to ASCII


     The proper and correct names for all those  funny  characters  on
     your keyboard, and in computer related text.  Here is the correct
     explanation.  Ignore all others;  this is of course the  absolute
     truth.

     ASCII  characters  sometimes  use  parity;  parity is a method of
     confusing your computer into thinking that  the  characters  sent
     are  something that they are not.  Parity has no practical use in
     real life; large computers use parity as part of their religion.


           Space. You can't see it there.

     !     Surprise mark; dammit; Incorrectly called "exclamation
           point" by foolish grade school teachers. Usually you will
           find either none or too many; every! other! word! will!
           have! one! or! more!!!

     "     Quote; double quote. Usually put around words the author is
           afraid he doesn't understand; for computer programs, it is
           the latter.

     #     pound; sharp; it must be called either pound or sharp, even
           though it never means either.  This is a secret password
           into computer priesthood.

     $     bucks; or, as originated by Digital Research, "the end".
           Actually, as far as DRI goes, its pretty prophetic ...

     %     percent; Used in drawing ugly boxes around useless text, as
           in bulletin boards and the like.

     &     and, in logical expressions; ampersand elsewhere. It looks
           nice and is hard to draw by hand. Let your printer do it.

     '     little quote; single quote; apostrophe to ignoramuses.
           Since it is very small and hard to see, some computer
           languages use it as an important operator.

     (     paren; left paren; open paren; or parenthesis, which is way
           too long a word. Used to correct compiler bugs in operator
           precedence, or by incompetents who cannot memorize a few
           hundred simple rules.

     )     paren; right paren; close paren; parenthesis. See above.

     *     star; blob; blatz; asterisk. Yet another horrible character
           used to draw boxes. Like most of these, it is used far too
           often to be of any use.

     +     plus; "and" if you're sloppy. Connects things together, and
           is sometimes used by people who want to draw boxes but can't
           afford graphics.

     ,     comma; what can I say?

     -     minus if near a number; dash otherwise. Some word
           processors try to fool you that a bunch of these in a row
           is really the end of a page; we know better than that.

     .     point if near a number; dot otherwise. Three dots together
           (like ...) can be called "dotdotdot", but it is really an
           ellipsis. This is another test for computer priesthood.

     /     slash; divided by; a good compiler will find many
           different, conflicting uses for this in different contexts.

     0-9   You know these. 0 is not "oh", it's zero, and is greater
           than 9, as we all know.

     :     colon; I have heard that human colons do not resemble this
           in the slightest.

     ;     semicolon. (Actually, its more than a colon, not part of
           one, it has a tail, but alas ...)

     <     angle bracket; less than. Can be put to great use when
           attempting to define the syntax for a computer program,
           like so:

                     PROGRAM ARGUMENT [optional { ...<required> } ]

     =     equals

     >     angle bracket; greater than

     ?     question mark; what; denotes confusion.

     @     blob; at; bang. Usually what your terminal displays just
           before going south with all your days work.

     A-Z   If I have to tell you ...

     [     bracket; square bracket

     \     backslash. There is usually a slash (regular style) to be
           found near by to check that you are paying attention.

     ]     bracket; square bracket

     ^     hat; incorrectly called caret. Sometimes means "Control-",
           as in "Control-C", syntactically similar to "Shift-A".  ^A
           is to a as A is to a. Sometimes used to cause arithmetic
           overflows; as in 100^5000.

     _     Underscore; incorrectly called underline. This is a
           wonderful character, because you really can't underscore
           another character without writing a long letter to your
           word processor, requesting it do do so.

     a-z   See note above on A - Z

     `     accent; backwards quote (sic). Not used in any computer
           worth anything. These are meant to be deleted when found.

     {     wiggly bracket; squiggly bracket; incorrectly called brace.
           While you may think it is like angle brackets and square
           brackets, it most definitely is not.

     |     bar; vertical line. Why does it have that little piece
           missing?

     }     wiggly bracket; squiggly bracket; incorrectly called brace.

     ~     wiggle; squiggle; traditionally called a tilde, which is
           obscure enough to continue using. Only very good languages
           find a use for this. It is extremely hard to see,
           especially when near a dash, little quote or back quote.

           Aha! Can't see that either! Its a delete!