July 30, 2014 Article

The Old Coot takes an English lesson.

By Merlin Lessler

A new term has entered our language, “Hash Tag.” It’s a “Twitter” thing. The # symbol is now called a hash tag. I grew up with it being the number sign. As in, “Sit up straight at your desk, open the Iowa Test folder, take out a #2 pencil and fill in the circles that you think are the correct answers to the questions.” That nomenclature stayed true for many, many decades. Then, along came automated phone answering systems at corporate call centers. “If you are calling about a problem with your bill, press one, followed by the pound key!”

“Pound key?” I didn’t know what it was and hung up. For a year or more I was closed off from the corporate world, not able to lodge a complaint. That pent up frustration resulted in my present condition: old-coot-itis, an incurable senior ailment. Finally, a teenage genius explained that # was the symbol for pound. If I pushed the phone key with that symbol on it I’d get through the queue. Of course he followed the explanation with an eye roll and a loud, “DUH!” I didn’t bother to explain that the phone I’d been calling on didn’t have any buttons; it was a dial phone with finger holes. Nor, did I mention that I used “lb” when I meant pound. I didn’t want to risk another eye roll. At least I was up to date. I knew that the # symbol had two meanings. Three, if I thought about the sheet music I’d read when playing my French horn in the junior high school band (now, middle school) and # meant the note to play was a sharp.

Of course it’s not that simple; it never is. If you are a miner or work in that industry, # means shaft. As in, we found a new vein in # (shaft) 4. Or, if you work in public relations, three #s in a row means, “End of press release.” Put it after a move in a chess by mail game and it means, “Checkmate!” Now it has a new name and a new meaning, Hash Tag! It’s used to mark key words or topics in a Tweet. Twitter users created it as a way to categorize and sort messages. People place a # symbol before a word or phrase in their Tweet, so it can be found when someone does a search for what people said on that topic.

That’s all I know about it. I’m not a Tweeter. I guess I need to find that teenager who explained the pound sign to me and have him explain why I might want to hop on the Twitter bandwagon. Why I might want to swamp my phone with messages from celebrities, politicians, businesses and other entities (with too much time on their hands). He’ll probably end his sales pitch with another eye roll, followed by a, “DUH!” But, this time I’ll be ready. I’ll just tell him to get his hash tag out of town.