Officials confirm worldwide shortage of # sign approaching critical levels

The United Nations Etymology, Punctuation, and Transcription office (UNEPT) recently confirmed that stocks of # signs are dangerously depleted worldwide. Factors leading to the decline include the widespread use of hash tags as well as other uses such as defining temporary tables in most dialects of SQL.

“We have tended to treat punctuation as though it were an unlimited resource, even though we’ve known for some time that that’s not true,” said UNEPT director Prin Tersdevil. He pointed to other examples such as the decline in semi-colons. “People think that usage has just gone out of style, but the reality is that semi-colon populations have failed to keep pace with consumption,” he said, spelling out the name of the punctuation mark to avoid using the endangered mark itself.

Internet communities reacted angrily to the announcement. “Who are they kidding? I can hit any key on my keyboard as many times as I want” tweeted user @keystuck. @keystuck did not add a hashtag.

Tersdevil indicated that his agency was carefully watching populations of other punctuation marks, such as @, for signs of decline. “@ is a particularly critical mark for today’s economy,” he said.

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