RE: British English technical variations

["Megan Golding" <megan -dot- golding -at- dvtsensors -dot- com>]

John Nesbit asks about British and American terminology:
> First, what differences exist between a British
> keyboard and a standard American one, if any?  For
> example, is there a £ sign instead of $ sign?
---
Geoff Lane said:
On the British QWERTY keyboard, the pound sign (£) is [Shift+3], I
understand that this gives a hash (#) on US keyboards. The hash placement on
UK keyboards is not completely standard. However, it is usually near the
[Return] key. The double quotation mark (") is [Shift+2], swapping position
with the '@' key of US keyboards.
---

In my case, the SHIFT-3 combination and terminology has proven confusing
during support. Here is a portion of a telephone conversation I had with a
British customer:

Me: "Type pound-capital-y-capital-i and press Enter."
Him: "I get an error."
Me: "Please read back what you typed."
Him: "pound-capital-y-capital-i."
Me: "Try this: hold shift and press 3...(etc.)"
Him: "I still get an error."

We finally realized: on the American keyboard, SHIFT+3 is called pound, but
looks like this, # and on the British keyboard is (of course) like this, £.
We finally figured things out and used his terminology of "hash" for (#) to
save confusion!

Megan Golding
Applications Engineer, DVT Corporation
megan -dot- golding -at- dvtsensors -dot- com