An Octothorpic Debriefing

[Nancy Lynch <lynchmob -at- COMLAND -dot- COM>]

To A Great # (grin) of Tech Writer responders:

Ohhhhh, I had no idea this question would create such a blizzard.  My
sincere apologies, esp. since it was a recent posting.  I thought the only
thing you guys were interested in was the number of spaces after a period
and prep phrases up with which to put!

To try and attach some usefulness to this effort, within a 24-hour period
there were upwards of 25 responses to my (innocent?) request .  Of interest
is that some posters emphatically passed on conflicting information.  A
related-field newsgroup came to an entirely different consensus!  Is it
then a question of who's driving?

As TWs in training, we've been advised never to take net info at face
value: this proves that point.  You also should be proud of yourselves
because six members gave reference sources to validate their response --
that's integrity!

Two other people in class managed to find "octothorpe" listed in a DTP
manual and on the CD-ROM version of Webster's (neither of which *y'all*
suggested).  This also points out the impact of the information revolution:
our instructor advised that in the years she's been assigning this, to date
only one person has ever been successful.  With WWW resources, we'll never
again have to struggle to remember the names of the seven dwarfs.

Not that I'm implying we start a new posting . . .

Thanks much, and hooray for tech writers!  I'm going into lurk mode now as
my penance.

Nancy Lynch
The Lynch Mob
end