as H is the eighth letter of the Latin alphabet. Terminals which did not have the backspace code mapped to the function of moving the cursor backwards and deleting the preceding character would display the symbols ^H (caret, H) when the backspace key was pressed. Even if a terminal did interpret backspace by deleting the preceding character, the system receiving the text might not. Then, the sender's screen would show a message without the supposedly deleted text, while that text, and the deletion codes, would be visible to the recipient. This sequence is still used humorously for epanorthosis by computer literates, denoting the deletion of a pretended blunder, much like a strikethrough; in this case, however, the ^H symbol is faked by typing a regular '^' followed by typing a regular 'H'. Example: Be nice to this fool^H^H^H^Hgentleman; he's visiting from corporate HQ. ^W and ^U An alternative sometimes seen is ^W, which is the shortcut to delete the previous word in the Berkeley Unix terminal line discipline. This shortcut has also made it into the insert mode of the Vi text editor and its clone Vim. ^U deletes a line. Other meanings In a mainframe environment, to backspace means to move a magnetic tape backwards, typically to the previous block. Notes References Computer keys Control characters