You know that top row of your keyboard? The one you don’t really use that often?

No no no, not that one. The number keys!

Yeah, those! Well see those little symbols over them? You probably use them every now and then without thinking about it too much. You’ve no doubt typed out currencies, percentages and made those overly enthusastic emoticons ^_^.

So what exactly is a ^ ? Is it a circumflex? A carrot? A fang? A chevron? Turns out, it’s all of those things, and more. You might be asking yourself, “So what? As long as I can type out my ^_^ face, I don’t care.” Well, these proper names might not be useful for the average person, but to a programmer, the myriad of symbols and characters that they use every day are incredibly important to them. You can’t go 10 minutes in programming without using ! { } [ ] ^ * # + = and the like. The various names of all the symbols can be difficult to keep track of, especially the more obscure ones. Thankfully, Jeff Atwood over at CodingHorror.com has come up with a nifty guide to keep all of the various names straight. If you’re a coder, or just a language geek, you owe it to yourself to check it out.