3 (number)

3 (three; /ˈθriː/) is a number, numeral, and glyph. It is the natural number following 2 and preceding 4.

Evolution of the glyph

Three is the largest number still written with as many lines as the number represents. (The Ancient Romans usually wrote 4 as IIII, but this was almost entirely replaced by the subtractive notation IV in the Middle Ages.) To this day 3 is written as three lines in Roman and Chinese numerals. This was the way the Brahmin Indians wrote it, and the Gupta made the three lines more curved. The Nagari started rotating the lines clockwise and ending each line with a slight downward stroke on the right. Eventually they made these strokes connect with the lines below, and evolved it to a character that looks very much like a modern 3 with an extra stroke at the bottom. It was the Western Ghubar Arabs who finally eliminated the extra stroke and created our modern 3. (The "extra" stroke, however, was very important to the Eastern Arabs, and they made it much larger, while rotating the strokes above to lie along a horizontal axis, and to this day Eastern Arabs write a 3 that looks like a mirrored 7 with ridges on its top line): ٣

Number (magazine)

Number is the leading Japanese sports magazine published on every Thursday by Bungeishunju. The official name is Sports Graphic Number. Though the circulation once hit 47 million, it is now around 10 million.

The first issue, released in April 1980, drew attention by the piece Enatsu's 21 balls (江夏の21球, Enatsu no 21 kyu). Yet the magazine failed to return a profit for the next 10 years. Today however, the magazine is one of the most profitable publications of Bungeishunju. The success of the magazine also led other rival publishers to launch sports magazines, though they tend to be less successful.

References

Grammatical number

In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two", or "three or more"). In many languages, including English, the number categories are singular and plural. Some languages also have a dual number or other arrangements.

The count distinctions typically, but not always, correspond to the actual count of the referents of the marked noun or pronoun.

The word "number" is also used in linguistics to describe the distinction between certain grammatical aspects that indicate the number of times an event occurs, such as the semelfactive aspect, the iterative aspect, etc. For that use of the term, see "Grammatical aspect".

Overview

Most languages of the world have formal means to express differences of number. One widespread distinction, found in English and many other languages, involves a simple two-way number contrast between singular and plural (car/cars, child/children, etc.). Discussion of other more elaborate systems of number appears below.

Personal Communications Services area codes

Area codes 500, 533, 544, 566 and 577 are non-geographic area codes reserved for personal communications services. The 500 code was authorized by the United States Federal Communications Commission, and introduced into the North American Numbering Plan in 1995.

In 1995 AT&T introduced a "follow-me" service under the brand name of AT&T True Connections using the 500 area code. It was designed to replace the AT&T EasyReach 700 service. Other local exchange carriers and interexchange carriers introduced similar competitive services.

AT&T True Connections service was not well received. Companies, hotels, and others with PBX equipment continued to block the dialing of 500 because it was a caller-paid number. Phone-sex services also began using the 500 prefix and forwarding the calls to various foreign countries.

The 500 prefix is still registered to a variety of phone companies, and is being used for non-geographic services including dial-up modem access.