Before Twitter came along and people decided the #-tag, or hashtag was a great way of grouping together conversations around a topic that weren’t otherwise easy to search, the # symbol meant a lot of different things.
As it’s the 10 year anniversary of the hashtag today, we thought we’d just go over the do’s and don’t’s of hashtag etiquette for Twitter and Instagram (if you’re using them on Facebook we have no help for you), and then tell you a little bit about the #history of the #hashtag.
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**1. Hashtags don’t pick up apostrophes **
Apostrophes are treated like spaces, they block off the rest of the text from being clickable, meaning that if you do a #don’ttweetitsboring tweet, all that will be hash tagged is #don and you’ll simply be shown a grid of square pictures of Don Draper, quotes from Donald Trump, and 13 year olds who’ve taken a photo of themselves vaping while holding a tenner.
**2. Hashtags have to be part of something **
It’s all very well constructing a lengthy hashtag like this #lenghtyhashtags4lyf but the whole point of hashtags is to be part of something collective and searchable. Making up your #ownreallylonghashtag is behaviour that teeters between showing just how out of touch you are, or proving how arrogant you are - do you really think you’re going to make that happen? You can start one, sure, but just think about how realistically it will take off.
**3. Hashtags can mutate **
Searching for something that's a bit risqué or simply dangerous? Be careful, because Instagram has been known to remove the capability to search via hashtags that are contrary to their policies. Porn and self-harm images fall under this remit. Twitter has been known to temporarily remove certain hash tagged trending topics if they’re causing a lot of grief, too.
**4. Be careful of dirty portmanteaus **
When you stick two words together it’s a portmanteau. It’s also a risk that the reader will insert their own spaces between words, and you could end up with #Susanalbumparty. The idea was to celebrate Susan Boyle’s album launch, the result was the implication that Susan Boyle goes by the nickname ‘Su’ and wants to have an anal bum party.
**5. Don't steal what’s not yours **
#woke used to be a place where black people could talk about big issues affecting them. Now it’s been borrowed and is used for entirely irrelevant instances of simply being awake, which is decidedly #notwoke. Sure, Twitter users will mutate their hashtags to talk about other things when their hashtag gets borrowed, and there are far worse people out there: the Nazis and far-right trolls who'll jump aboard encouraging, progressively liberal hashtags and fill them with hate. But still, don't be even on the thin end of the wedge of that problem.
We give it about three more years before a new tag is invented especially for wedding days, because really, how many #mrandmrssmiths or #peteandmarygetwed are there going to be?
Also! Just so you know some facts on where the hashtag came from. It used to mean pound, as in weight, in the Roman times. Written before a number, though, it grew to mean number. Coders and geeks who used Twitter back in the technological dark ages (10 years ago) agreed it wasn’t really used much elsewhere (why write #number when you could just write the number to show it’s a number?) so decided it could be a great way of tagging up conversations.
Happy birthday, hashtag, may you forever help topple governments and spread jokes and fake news and lolsy memes. PS. If you have a birthday cake can it be a cake of hash browns because they are one of the most beautiful #foods invented.
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Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.