ASCII Pronunciation Rules for Programmers

In the UK:-

() - brackets
[] - square brackets
{} - curly brackets

I would like to bring this into the limelight that some people use start/stop parenthesis, bracket and braces for (), [] and {} respectively. Using this convention allows listener to clearly visualize what speaker is trying to convey.

every technical speaker should read this.

In Python they use a lot of double underscores. Iā€™ve heard of a movement to call that character combo a ā€œdunderā€ as in __mifflin

I donā€™t know how this originated, but growing up (in Florida) my programmer friends and I called ā€˜{ā€™ ā€˜}ā€™ ā€œfrench brackets/bracesā€. Iā€™ve never found anyone else who used those terms, and I donā€™t know where they originated.

I would like to take this opportunity to take the bold, prescriptive stance that

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A FORWARD SLASH, AND NO SUCH THING AS A BACKWARD SLASH.

There is a slash. There is a backslash. That is all.

Um, a cedille has nothing to do with a comma.

An old teacher of mine consistently called [ and ] ā€œsubā€ and ā€œbusā€, respectively. It has a nice symmetry to it, donā€™t you think?

HI,
Really a nice topic to talk on, It would be fun if we all try this thing among ourselves and check what we all pronounceā€¦This is certainly going to b a fun Session for me on next weekendā€¦Thanks for a nice list and a excellent ideaā€¦

And i was amased to c the ā€œ@ā€ is called APE, ROSE, CAT and CABBAGE???
How this name came upon???

We generally use the word ā€˜subā€™ for the underscore in code reviews. Its faster as one syllable.

A professor at my university taught me and everyone else on the course to say ā€˜fnutā€™ for ā€™ and ā€˜double-fnutā€™ for ". It is now the standard term for those characters among the students.

Iā€™m not sure about the American Qwerty keyboard, but at least on the Norwegian it is very difficult to reach those characters. The tilde for example, will only appear if you enter some other letter after it. To get only a single tilde you are forced to enter it twice and then delete the second one.

Someone should design a keyboard for programmers where all the special keys are easy to reach and can be entered with a single keystroke.

For some unknown reason my RSS reader has some difficulties reading this post and listing it. I am using ā€œiGoogleā€ RSS gadget with the last three entries listed. And this lastest one just doesnā€™t appear. It was even weirder earlier today because then the list was just toootally corrupted.

I guess iGoogle RSS gadget doesnā€™t like all those strange characters. Maybe one of those is improperly escaped by the gadget.

Paul, Iā€™m sure Iā€™ve heard ā€œfrenchā€ brackets/braces for {} on occasion. I canā€™t say where or when, but itā€™s familiar.

Googling for either of

  • ā€œfrench bracesā€ programming

or

  • ā€œfrench bracketsā€ programming

turns up a scattering of hits, so at least weā€™re not nuts.

)(*!

back tick for ` is heavily used here.

tic-tac-to for # has been used as well.

both cases by the non-programmers

Has anyone else ever heard { or } called a ā€œHitchcockā€? I have heard that a few times.

wow, what a worthless post.

@Nathan: Great example of what I suggest should be avoided: shift+6 on a US keyboard might give a ^ (carat, up-arrow), but on mine (Swedish) youā€™d get a .

@Yves: ā€˜Circumflexā€™ is indeed English for the French ā€˜circonflexā€™.

And there are plenty of examples above of how confusing it can be to describe a character by its function in a specific language, unless youā€™re absolutely certain that the listener understands that particular context.

By the way, no one has mentioned the (shift+4 on a Swedish keyboard), which I have heard described as a general currency symbol, but no brief or amusing name yetā€¦

New Zealand newsreaders used to have an annoying habit of calling double quotation marks ā€œinverted commasā€.

Not sure if they still do it, since I refuse to watch the news here anymore.

@Jim ā€“ yeah, well, octothorpe you, man!