Why Is It Called Continental Breakfast

Breakfast menus can undoubtedly vary from one hotel to the next. Still, a continental breakfast is generally a spread of light morning fare that doesn’t typically require much preparation, if any. For ...

What is the "/" symbol called? Being a techie, I have heard it called the "forward slash" in the context of unix directories. However, I am now doing technical writing and need to know the actual n...

What is the / symbol called? - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange

I know that ^ is called a caret, but this doesn't seem to apply to the similarly shaped but nonetheless different < and > symbols. The only names I've heard them called is the less-than sign and the greater-than sign, but those names seem rather informal and apply only to their use in math.

These are the signs: * What is it called in general, and what it is called when used in math, to multiply numbers? * is called an asterisk; although sometimes people will use the generic term "star." When it is used in mathematical equations, people say "times." Example 12*2=24 would be read out loud as: Twelve times two equals twenty-four.

The term twitter tag was coined by Chris Messina and popularized in a column by Stowe Boyd. It is sometimes called the octothorn, an alternate (mis)pronunciation of octothorpe. Sometimes it is called the tic-tac-toe sign because of the vertical and horizontal lines drawn in a game of tic-tac-toe are similar pattern to that used in #.

Over on Stackoverflow, I keep seeing questions wherein posters say: *I have an item named SoAndSo (a table, a file, etc.). Shouldn't it be: *I have an item called SoAndSo. Is "named" an accepta...