This post is pure geek. So you may want to skip it if you're not up to it.
The title of this post is, literally, a pet peeve. I had not heard someone say "Ass Key Two" since, oh, about 1976. The dark ages. Before the internet as we know it now. Before the web (as we know it now). Before a lot of things, including the IBM Personal Computer.
In the wondrous days of yore.
The term "Ass Key Two" does not actually exist. Partially, it is an acronym coined early on in serial communications. The correct (yes, italicized, bolded, and underlined) version of this acronym is thus:
ASCII
There is no two.
This acronym means "American Standard Code for Information Interchange". Pronounced only "Ass Key".
ASCII is the code whereby (for example) the letter "A" is represented by the bits 1000001. In hex it's 41.
And the code 0110010?
That is a numeric 2.
But ASCII?
That's not a II.
2 comments:
You may know what the "Ass Key" is but where is the "Any Key"?
Honest-to-God true story: We had a contract once with ITT Tech; one of their instructors stopped by to show us a problem with a PC and actually asked, when Abort, Retry, Fail came up, asked "Where's the 'abort' key?"
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