atari2600land's Blog

Over here, in recent years we have been schooled to not cross the 7's anymore because the OCR in sorting systems and other form processing gets confused.

 

I've noticed that the majority of people in China and perhaps Japan too, cross their 0's like how I think it has been done in ham radio and of course on many home computers to keep the zero 0 from the letter O as in Oscar. However we've never been taught to cross zeroes in the same way many cross 7's.

 

Furthermore, it used to be popular to cross the letter Z as in Zaxxon too, but I usually only see that in my grandparents' generation. Most people in my age and younger write their Z's without crossing them. Exactly which other letter or symbol you could mistake it for is unclear, if it is to keep apart from the number 2.

I cross my 7s and Zs... *shrug*

 

Those are not "to keep apart from" anything. It's just how the symbols are written in some European languages, like German, and in some styles of script in the western world. Like, we dot the "i", or the "g" has that curvy thingy at the bottom.

I don't. Although I was watching Jeopardy last night and saw on Final Jeopardy some guy crossed his Z.