

The Octothorpe, Part 1 - johngunderman
http://www.shadycharacters.co.uk/2011/05/the-octothorpe-part-1-of-2/

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vineel

      in North America, ‘5#’ means ‘five pounds in weight’
    

I've never heard this. Is this common in other parts of the US? Canada?

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billswift
It is common enough in the Mid-Atlantic, including DC; haven't you ever
wondered about the telephone ads and instructions, like for automatic redial,
calling it the "pound sign"? I haven't seen it as much in the last few decades
as I used to, but that is mainly because more signs and labels and so forth
are printed, and more memos and stuff typed (emailed), than in the "old days";
there isn't as much need for extreme abbreviations, which is what this amounts
to, as there was. For that matter, I haven't seen it being used as an
abbreviation for number, as in #5, much recently either.

