Glossary

The "H" and "T" in HTML. The concept which makes all this possible.

Sometimes written octothorpe, the literal meaning of the word is "eight fields". The mark has been used to denote a village with eight fields around it (symbolised in the mark itself) and this name for it is the one traditionally used by printers and typographers.

The mark is, however, variously and more commonly known by other names; for instance number or pound. My bank's automated telephone service calls it square ("press square on your keypad"). Programmers call it a hash, and that's why my usage needs a little explanation here.

The typographer Robert Bringhurst, notes:

Otherwise known as the numeral sign. It has also been used as a symbol for the pound avoirdupois, but this usage is now archaic. In cartography, it is also a symbol for village: eight fields around a central square, and this is the source of its name. Octothorp means eight fields.

Elements of Typographic Style

While we are largely talking about programming web sites, my early work experience was with typesetting and typography so I have a great affection for the word and prefer it to hash, even in this context. In the end the name doesn't matter, it's the mark itself which counts when used in HTML anchors.

Plain text

Plain text means text which has no formatting applied to it. Text in a word processor almost always has some formatting, even if it is just the default for that window. The format will include information about the text style, typeface, colour, etc. and these aspects are almost always presentational rather than structural.

On the other hand, plain text comes with no invisible baggage and is free to be interpreted within the structure and context in which it is found.

When creating texts for the Web we use plain text and let the browser software create the presentation style based on the text's context together with some rules which we may also provide separately.

Uppercase

Uppercase simply means capital letters. The word comes from the days when printed text was created using little blocks of metal or wood, each with a single letter. The letters (or type) were kept in cases, the capital letters in the upper case and the "small" letters in the lower case. See also Wikipedia and The Type Museum