On 6/12/21 1:58 AM, Christian Corti via cctalk wrote: > On Sat, 12 Jun 2021, Tony Duell wrote: >> I wonder if in the original list, a '1' was misread as a '7' or vice >> versa. I am told that in some countries the '7' is conventionally >> written with a crossbar across the downstroke to avoid this. My father >> always did this, for all it is not common in England. > > In Germany, we *always* write a bar across the 7. I don't like uncrossed > sevens because they are ugly ;-) and hard to distinguish from a 1.
I do stroke my sevens just for clarity. However, here in the US, few people write their ones with a serif--just a single vertical stroke. That, in my experience is not common practice in many European countries. Writing zero with a slash, by the same token, probably leaves the Scandanavian readers puzzled--as "oh" stroked is a letter of the alphabet. Regardless, I stroked mine--a more universal practice might have been to write zero with a horizontal or vertical stroke. I recall turning in keypunch forms to be punched and receiving my job back with a note saying "I didn't know if you meant zero or oh, so a did some of both". Wastebasket meet card deck. After that, I pretty much did all my own keypunching; management didn't like that, but I persisted. --Chuck