I'm a graphic designer and avoid it like the plague. Because the bottom extends to the descender instead of the baseline, it always looks misaligned.

https://i.imgur.com/FiFKomt.png

Interesting perspective. I had never paid attention to that detail. Even knowing that, I personally don’t see it as a problem.

The best titles are the ones that don‘t gratuitously include the site name. It‘s a real annoyance when using the HN bookmarklet.

Agreed, but sometimes it makes sense to include the site name. For instance, on a project's page like "Acme" adding "Acme | SiteName" provides more context.

I've always called it the Pipe character.. anyone else? Never heard it called the Vertical Bar before.

It’s called the pipe in computing circles because we use it to “pipe” output from one command to the next on the command line. But IIRC it exists on the keyboard from back when it was needed to draw borders for tables in the typewriter era.

Yeah, me too. However, I used the Wikipedia name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_bar