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Two different characters that render alike, substituted for each other constantly.
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.
Different characters that render alike. The musical sharp slants its horizontals and keeps its verticals upright; this sign does the reverse.
Drawn from the visual attributes recorded for each symbol. Only traits the two records disagree about are listed.
| Trait | Number sign | Sharp sign |
|---|---|---|
| Built from | lines and dots | lines and dots, abstract |
| Number sign | Sharp sign | |
|---|---|---|
| What it means | Number, hash, or a tag marker | Raise the note by a semitone |
| Code point | U+0023 | U+266F |
| Which strokes slant | The verticals | The horizontals |
| On a keyboard | Yes | No — needs a character picker |
| Relationship (from Symbolwise's records) | Commonly confused with Sharp sign — Different characters that render alike. The musical sharp slants its horizontals and keeps its verticals upright; this sign does the reverse. | Commonly confused with Number sign — Different characters that render alike; the sharp slants its horizontals and keeps its verticals upright, the number sign does the reverse. |
Unicode Code Chart: Miscellaneous Symbols (U+2600–U+26FF)
The Unicode Consortium · retrieved 2026-08-01
Authoritative for the character's code point, name and block only. Unicode assigns identity; it does not define what a symbol means in performance.
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.
Wikipedia · retrieved 2026-08-01
Tertiary reference. Used for what a mark instructs a performer to do and for uncontested history, never for a claim that any body defines staff notation.
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.
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.
The ampersand is a ligature of the Latin word et, still visible in some italic forms where the e and the t can be picked out. The Tironian et is a separate mark descending from a Roman shorthand, shaped like a small seven, and it is in daily public use in Ireland as the written form of 'agus'. A reader who knows only the ampersand takes the other for a numeral, which on a bilingual road sign produces a confidently wrong place name.