Two unrelated characters that share the spoken name 'pound', which is why a British reader and an American reader can be talking about entirely different keys.
They are not variants of each other. # is the number sign — hash, hashtag, and the 'pound key' on a North American telephone keypad. £ is the pound sterling currency sign, from the Latin libra. The only thing they share is the word people say out loud.
Both are called 'pound' in different contexts; they are unrelated characters.
Drawn from the visual attributes recorded for each symbol. Only traits the two records disagree about are listed.
| Trait | Number sign | Pound sign |
|---|---|---|
| Built from | lines and dots | letter like |
| Symmetry | point | none |
| Number sign | Pound sign | |
|---|---|---|
| What it identifies | A number, a topic tag, or a telephone key | An amount of money in pounds |
| Where the name comes from | 'Pound' as a weight abbreviation, via US telephone usage | Latin 'libra pondo', a pound weight |
| Unicode | U+0023 | U+00A3 |
| Shape | Two horizontal and two vertical strokes forming a grid | A looping capital L crossed by one stroke |
| Also confused with | The musical sharp sign, which slants the opposite strokes | Nothing common — the confusion runs one way, through the name |
| Relationship (from Symbolwise's records) | Commonly confused with Pound sign — Both are called 'pound' in different contexts; they are unrelated characters. | Commonly confused with Number sign — Both are called 'pound'; they are unrelated characters. |
Unicode Code Chart: Basic Latin (U+0000–U+007F)
The Unicode Consortium · retrieved 2026-07-30
Authoritative for the character's code point, name and block only. Unicode assigns identity; it does not define what a symbol means in use.
Unicode Code Chart: Latin-1 Supplement (U+0080–U+00FF)
The Unicode Consortium · retrieved 2026-07-30
Authoritative for the character's code point, name and block only. Unicode assigns identity; it does not define what a symbol means in use.
Wikipedia · retrieved 2026-07-30
Tertiary reference. Used for widely-agreed identity and origin summary, not for contested detail or exact dates.
Wikipedia · retrieved 2026-07-30
Tertiary reference. Used for widely-agreed identity and origin summary, not for contested detail or exact dates.
Look at which strokes slant. The musical sharp has upright verticals and horizontals that slant slightly upward; the number sign is the other way round, with slanted verticals and level horizontals. They are separate Unicode characters — U+266F and U+0023 — and text search, sorting and filenames all treat them as different.
The character is one thing; what reads it decides the meaning. Before a word on social media it makes a tag. Before a numeral it means 'number'. At the start of a line in a shell script, Python or most configuration formats it means everything after it is a comment and is ignored. A hash inside a string is none of these.
Both are drawn as one continuous decorative stroke with a closed loop and a tail that crosses back over itself, which is why a description of the shape alone reaches both. The clef is far taller, spans a stave, and its spiral encircles one specific line — that encircled line is the note G, and it is the only reason the shape is drawn where it is.
As punctuation the asterisk points at a footnote or marks a required field. In a filename pattern typed at a shell it matches any run of characters, including none — and the shell expands it against real filenames before the command runs, so the command never sees the pattern at all. That expansion is the part people are surprised by.