accessing the hash symbol

That's alright, no worries. You say you're a touch typist? Well, everyone's a touch typist. I mean, they all touch the keyboard whilst typing! Let's see what the OP has to say.

mettajob said:

I changed my keyboard settings from UK to New York and all worked fine

Starnge I would have thought you needed to go from US to UK

Not necessarily. If he's got a US keyboard but has installed the UK keyboard layout, then he will have this result if he enters the appropriate symbol as marked on the keyboard. The keyboard layout itself is quite arbitary, and we are familiar with the standard layout. To the computer, the keyboard is just a series of switches and pressing one merely sends a scan code to the computer. This scan code is like an index to a table - the actual character is that pointed to in the table by that scan code.

These images show the difference in layout between the standard UK and US keyboards.

Thanks for that. I am now seeing it from the US keyboard angle and it makes sense! We live and learn and hopefully digest!

You're welcome.

Incidentally, the root of the qwerty layout which we are all familiar with lies in the development of the typewriter, and the need to slow people down to prevent the mechanism jamming. Letters that commonly go together, like Q and U, were placed so that the typehammers approached from a different angle. By the time electric typewriters were developed (the first ones were merely standard ones with electro-mechanical assistance), the layout had become so common and so familiar that it would be impractical to change it. We have since had golf-ball typewriters, where the typehammers are replaced by a single print unit head resembling a golf-ball carrying raised impressions of the various characters to full-blown word processors using keyboards just like the one attached to the computer that I and most other people use. Despite this, the basic layout has remained the same for around 100 years.