# on every keyboard
| System | Layout | Key combination |
|---|---|---|
| macOS | French – Numerical | ⇧ Shift+@ |
| macOS | French | ⇧ Shift+@ |
| macOS | Belgian | ⇧ Shift+@ |
| macOS | Swiss French | ⌥ Option+3 |
| macOS | Canadian Multilingual (CSA) | ⇧ Shift+3 |
| macOS | Canadian French | ⇧ Shift+3 |
| macOS | Spanish | ⌥ Option+3 |
| macOS | Latin American | ⇧ Shift+3 |
| macOS | U.S. | ⇧ Shift+3 |
| macOS | ABC | ⇧ Shift+3 |
| macOS | U.S. International – PC | ⇧ Shift+3 |
What is the hash sign for?
The hash sign # (also “number sign” or “pound sign” in the US) is everywhere:
- hashtags on social networks:
#typography; - comments in Python, Ruby, shell or YAML:
# This is a comment; - Markdown headings:
## Subheading; - CSS id selectors and colors:
#menu,#E8870E; - C preprocessor directives:
#include <stdio.h>; - anchors in web addresses:
/page#section.
Pitfalls
- The musical sharp ♯ (U+266F) is a different, slanted character used in music notation (C♯). Hashtags and code need the hash sign
#. - On this layout: ⇧ Shift+3. On French – Numerical: ⇧ Shift+@.
# technical details
| Unicode code point | U+0023 |
|---|---|
| Official Unicode name | NUMBER SIGN |
| HTML entity | # |
| CSS | content: "\23"; |
| JavaScript / JSON | "\u0023" |
| UTF-8 bytes | 23 |
| URL encoding | %23 |
The official name comes from the Unicode Character Database (ICU).