Crossing the Great Divide

[FreeThinker]

In an attempt to explain American English to the British and British English to Americans, The Guardian, a glorious UK paper that may save the US Constitution from the NSA, and which has two editions, one British and one American, has begun a feature called "English to English, an attempt to decide, as they say, whether the pound sign is "#" or " L with a dash in the middle" (my American keyboard doesn't have one of those funny L-things and Firefox doesn't offer me one). Anyway.... check it out. It's very entertaining. Currently, they are discussing the accent of the Geico gecko. (Does Geico sell insurance in the UK?)

http://english2english.tumblr.com/About

[Merkin]

Very interesting. You must come for dinner sometime.

[Cole Parker]

(my American keyboard doesn't have one of those funny L-things and Firefox doesn't offer me one).

In Word, alt+0163 gives you the pound sign. But if that doesn't work: here. £ Copy that, paste it somewhere, and it'll always be available.

Cole, a full service provider

[Mihangel]

Another deeply embarrassing trap for the unwary, into which I fell before I learned better, is "keep your pecker up." On the two sides of the pond, pecker refers to totally different parts of the anatomy.

[FreeThinker]

And, here is the aforementioned blog post about the Geico gecko. I hesitate to say "It's very interesting," lest our British friends-- as the chart on the about page says-- will interpret it as meaning, "It's complete nonsense." :-)

http://english2english.tumblr.com/

[Cole Parker]

I thought they used the work 'rubbish' for that.

C

[colinian]

I beg to differ Cole: holding down the Alt key and typing 0163 on the number pad (but not using the number keys in the top row of the keyboard) does work here and results in the character £. Pretty cool, 'eh?

Colin

[Merkin]

Thanks, Colin. Any secret path to achieve the Euro sign on American keyboards?

[Bruin Fisher]

If you're using MS Word or other leading word processing software, there'll be a 'insert/special character' function which opens a dialog box with thousands of characters to choose from. Some of them can be produced with the Alt+four digit number function. I note, for instance, that the japanese Yen is Alt+0165, and that the quarter, half and three quarters symbols are respectively Alt+0188, 0189, and 0190.

The Euro symbol has the numeric code:

UTF-8: 0xE2 0x82 0xA0
UTF-16: 0x20A0

C octal escaped UTF-8: \342\202\240
XML decimal entity: ₠

but I'm afraid I can't see from the above what you type with the Alt key to get it on screen. Perhaps someone cleverer than I can help.

Incidentally the Alt+xxxx function is a bit odd - you have to hold down the Alt key throughout, and the character doesn't appear on screen until you let go of it.

[The Pecman]

Option-3 on the Mac keyboard:

£

on just about every standard typeface.

[colinian]

Thanks, Colin. Any secret path to achieve the Euro sign on American keyboards?

I did the Alt+0163 using a standard Logitech American keyboard (on my desktop running Win 7) and the keyboard on my Acer laptop (running Win 8)..

James, if you really want/need a single key combination to get an £ in documents because you use it a lot, or you use a laptop without a numeric pad, let me know and I'll email you a little program (HoeKey) that you can unzip and it has the £ character preconfigured. It can also be used for creating other keystroke commands. It runs in Windows 7 and earlier, and Windows 8 (with some mods I made to the ini file).

Colin

[Bruin Fisher]

I think there may be some slight misunderstanding going on here.

The pound £ symbol signifies the UK sterling currency.

The Euro € symbol signifies the European common currency, which is different.

The £ can be got by Alt+0163 on the numeric keypad of a standard keyboard, I don't know how you get a Euro symbol using Alt+xxxx. I switched to my word processing software and used Insert/Special Character, then copied and pasted it into this post.

[Merkin]

Guess I'll stick to dollars.

[FreeThinker]

Wow. I was just being silly when I made the comment about the pound sign. I thought the Guardian blog was humorous.. Its interesting how these threads go off topic, so... quoting from the translation chart (see the original link so you can translate)

"With the greatest respect...I'm a bit disappointed... though I'm sure it's my fault..."

[Cole Parker]

Do the English really speak with the meanings on that chart in mind? If so, how in the world do they communicate with each other, let alone Americans? Or, is the chart simply intended to be humorous?

Bruin? Camy? Mihangel? Rick? Anyone?

C

[Guest Dabeagle]

As I mentioned in another thread, these boards can get so far off topic so fast....remember, everyone, one message to Camy (who can't physically reach me across the pond) ...

Where's Martin?

[Mihangel]

Cole asks "Do the English really speak with the meanings on that chart in mind? If so, how in the world do they communicate with each other, let alone Americans? Or, is the chart simply intended to be humorous?"

Sure, there's humour in it. But I understand the reasoning behind all the examples, and use a lot of them myself. Fabled British understatement? Politely disguised disagreement? If the person you're talking to understands the language too, no problem. Much also depends, don't forget, on tone of voice.

[Bruin Fisher]

Do the English really speak with the meanings on that chart in mind? If so, how in the world do they communicate with each other, let alone Americans? Or, is the chart simply intended to be humorous?

Bruin? Camy? Mihangel? Rick? A

Well yes, the chart is intended to be humorous, but also yes, we really do talk just like that.

[colinian]

I think there may be some slight misunderstanding going on here.

The pound £ symbol signifies the UK sterling currency.

The Euro € symbol signifies the European common currency, which is different.

The £ can be got by Alt+0163 on the numeric keypad of a standard keyboard, I don't know how you get a Euro symbol using Alt+xxxx. I switched to my word processing software and used Insert/Special Character, then copied and pasted it into this post.

The Euro symbol € is Alt+0128.

Colin

[Bruin Fisher]

Thanks Colin! I thought you might be able to help with that one!