Why is the abbreviation for "pounds" "lbs"?

[Tante Shvester]

"Lb" is the abbreviation for "pound"?  How does that make any sense?  Is it some kind of Latin thing, like "Pb" being the symbol for lead?

And how did a "z" creep into the abbreviation for ounces?


My father in law was once trying to tell me an email address, and he called the "@" "that thing that looks like a lowercase a with a long tail that almost circles it".

"That's called 'the at sign' or just 'at'", I told him.

"At?  Of all the words that they had to come up with an abbreviation for, they picked 'at'?"

He has a point.  Why do we need a special symbol for that tiny word?

[rivka]

"Lb" is the abbreviation for "pound"?  How does that make any sense?  Is it some kind of Latin thing, like "Pb" being the symbol for lead?

Yes. You're probably familiar with Libra:

[Tante Shvester]

Is Libra related to libraries and librarians?

And if Libra is the pound sign, then how does # tie in to that?

[rivka]

Wikipedia suggests
lb -> -> #

[Porter]

Interesting.

[Tante Shvester]

Wikipedia suggests
lb -> -> #

I dunno.  Seems like a stretch to me.

[Porter]

It's not nearly as much of a stretch as some of the letters in our alphabet have undergone.

[sarcasticmuppet]

Yeah, have you *seen* the ascenders and descenders on carolingian miniscule?

[Tante Shvester]

Yeah, have you *seen* the ascenders and descenders on carolingian miniscule?

Are you talking dirty to me?

[Neutros the Radioactive Dragon]

Not unless you want her to. If so, then yes.

[Jonathon]

"Lb" is the abbreviation for "pound"?  How does that make any sense?  Is it some kind of Latin thing, like "Pb" being the symbol for lead?

And how did a "z" creep into the abbreviation for ounces?

Both abbreviations comes from Italian (or maybe lb. is from Latin and oz. is from Italian). So yeah, it's kind of like Pb for lead.

My father in law was once trying to tell me an email address, and he called the "@" "that thing that looks like a lowercase a with a long tail that almost circles it".

"That's called 'the at sign' or just 'at'", I told him.

"At?  Of all the words that they had to come up with an abbreviation for, they picked 'at'?"

He has a point.  Why do we need a special symbol for that tiny word?

We've talked about this before. @ is not an abbreviation of "at," but simply a variant graphic representation of it. It probably evolved from the French à written rapidly.

[Tante Shvester]

We've talked about this before.

Yeah, but I can never talk about it enough.

[Porter]

I know we've talked about it before, but what was "@" used for before the internet?  Why was it important enough to become a standard typewriter symbol?

[Jonathon]

It was used for commercial and accounting stuff. I'm not sure how that justified its inclusion in typewriter keyboards, but the same could be said for most of the special characters on the keyboard.

[Neutros the Radioactive Dragon]

Hmm. Although this was probably some kind of misinformation itself, I was trained to believe the symbol for @ was a "q" with the tail wrapped around the letter and indicated "quantity".

i.e. 20 @ $2.15 each. (there used to be an @ key on cash registers that did exactly that.)

[Neutros the Radioactive Dragon]

A brief seach, however does not support that idea.

Wikipedia reports it as "at the rate of".

[Jonathon]

To be fair, the Wikipedia article makes it sound like it's the subject of some debate. The à origin makes the most sense to me. "Quantity" doesn't make much sense to me from a semantic point of view.

[Neutros the Radioactive Dragon]

To me either.

[Noemon]

It was used for commercial and accounting stuff. I'm not sure how that justified its inclusion in typewriter keyboards, but the same could be said for most of the special characters on the keyboard.

You think? Looking at my keyboard, the only signs that seem terribly specialized are the "@" and "^" symbols.

Hmmm...where was the cent symbol on keyboards, back when it was included?

::off to google::

[Noemon]

I would love to play with a Hansen writing ball.

[sarcasticmuppet]

Steampunk-tastic!!!

[Noemon]

Isn't it?  I may have to make a picture of one of those an avatar.

I haven't found the answer to my question yet, but this has been pretty interesting to read over.

[Porter]

Noemon, I think you should develop a typewriter based on that design.

And then rule the world.

[Jonathon]

It was used for commercial and accounting stuff. I'm not sure how that justified its inclusion in typewriter keyboards, but the same could be said for most of the special characters on the keyboard.

You think? Looking at my keyboard, the only signs that seem terribly specialized are the "@" and "^" symbols.

The tilde and grave accent are kind of odd choices, especially considering that the acute is used so much more (not that any are very common in English). We've got the plus and minus signs (sort of), but no multiplication or division signs. We've got an asterisk but no dagger. We've got three different kinds of brackets, plus the pipe and backslash, but no bullet, no degree symbol, and no prime. When you do typesetting, you realize pretty quickly that a lot of the symbols you need are not on the keyboard, while a lot of symbols on the keyboard are actually used pretty rarely.

[The Genuine]

Could it be that the grave accent ` is meant as a counter part to the apostrophe ' ?

What was the original thinking behind the pipe | ?

I wish the keyboard had a bullet • .

How much do you need a prime ? when you have the apostrophe ' ?