For a while now I’ve read rants, seen graphics on Facebook, and  shared personal conversations with people complaining about the use of the hash symbol (#) on the internet. To be honest, I think some of the complaints are well warranted- the use of it, like everything else in popular culture, gets so quickly overused to the point of it becoming a cliché well before the fad even properly begins.

It as also jumped from the printed page into the realm of spoken word. That really annoys me- people incessantly adding “hash tag this” and “hash tag that” to major points in conversations as if it logically adds importance to what they are saying. It doesn’t and they should stop it. The reason for this annoyance, as with anything else that grinds my gears, is because people fail to fully understand the hows and whys of something and just mindlessly repeat the behavior like sheep just to appear “hip” and in the now.

Take, for example, this graphic that has been popping up on social media lately (I’ll get to the use of “memes” in their own right some other time):

While it is correct that these are sharps, the graphic meme shown above is somewhat misleading. Let me explain:

These are sharps due only to the fact that the parallel lines are slightly slanted from left to right. This is done to avoid it being confused with the musical staff lines. As such, this usage and moniker of “sharp” is primarily in musical circles.

Many people also refer to this symbol as the “number sign” because of its use when it immediately precedes a number. But that, in itself, can be incorrect depending on variance in design. Both the sharp and number sign may have slanted vertical lines; however, they are required in the sharp sign, but optional in the number sign, which may be straight or slanted to the right (#) depending on typeface or handwriting style.

Growing up in Michigan, I’ve referred to it as a number sign before due to my close proximity to Canada. Why does that matter? It’s because the term “number sign” is primarily used and popular in Canada. In the rest of North America the symbol is mostly called the “pound sign”. That’s why the corresponding telephone key was dubbed the “pound key” when touch tone phones were developed. I should mention that one theory claims that back in early 1900, the Teletype Corporation was the first to use # to mean “number”.

Outside of North America, at least in the rest of the English-speaking world, the symbol is called “hash” (and, yes, the corresponding telephone key in those places is called the “hash key”, because the term “pound” also describes the British currency symbol and can be confusing).

Now, as to why these are called hash tags in modern popular culture, is easy to explain.

In social media and internet lingo, specifically Twitter, the symbol is used to identify, or “tag”, terms and phrases as searchable items, collecting and collating all user updates containing them together when used by a person in a keyword search; for example, #BannedBooks, and turns it into an active hyperlink. The result is a list of updates by various users all about banned books.

These tags are also used by groups, businesses, and entertainment franchises to quickly link items together for a particular cause or contest, such as #SU2C for “stand up to cancer” and #WeBelieveDET for “We believe in Detroit”, which was used during the Detroit Tigers’ 2013 playoff run to show support for the team and as entry into various ticket contests.

Websites like Facebook have since taken up the term “hash tag” and its use, increasing its popularity and reference as a “hash tag”. So while it can be annoying in the wrong or redundant situations, it does serve a very logical and useful purpose to those with a clear mind capable of critical thinking.

So there you have it. Another myth explained well beyond a simplistic and misleading meme.

I know, I need to get outside more. Idle minds and all that.