Number Sign
Part of Basic ASCII: Alt 33 to 126
On Windows, hold Alt and type 35 on the numeric keypad to insert number sign.
- Alt code
- Alt+35
- HTML entity
- #
- Unicode
- U+0023
About this symbol
This one sign has many names: number sign, hash, pound sign in American English, and octothorpe, a word coined by engineers at Bell Labs when they added it to the telephone keypad in the 1960s. A widely told account traces its shape to “lb”, the abbreviation for libra, the Roman pound weight, written with a line across it.
In 2007 Chris Messina suggested putting it in front of a word on Twitter to group posts by topic, and the hashtag was born. It looks like the musical sharp ♯, but the two are different characters: the sharp has slanted horizontal strokes, while the number sign usually slants its upright strokes.
Unicode facts
- Official name
- NUMBER SIGN
- Also called
- Pound sign (weight), Hashtag, hash, Crosshatch, octothorpe
- Type
- Punctuation
- Unicode block
- Basic Latin
- Unicode group
- ASCII punctuation and symbols
- Added in
- Unicode 1.1 (1993)
- Unicode notes
- For denoting musical sharp 266F is preferred
Click the symbol or any value at the top of the page to copy it. See the full Basic ASCII: Alt 33 to 126 chart for related characters.