[COFF] On having a slash

[grog at lemis.com (Greg 'groggy' Lehey)]

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On Monday, 13 April 2020 at 19:01:13 +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> In the time-mean I also saw a slash through "Z" (Zulu, Zed, Zee) in order
> to distinguish it from a "2" (FIGURES TWO); WTF?  And you *never* slashed
> your ones, lest thou ended up with the contents of an 029 chad-box over
> thine head...
>
> These days, I merely slash my sevens by habit and it doesn't even raise an
> eyebrow; even Oz Pigeon Post's mail mangler seems to accept it[*].
>
> What're other bods' experiences?

It's funny that nobody seems to have differentiated these usages.
I've seen at least three:

1.  "European" characters: 1 with a serif (is that really the correct
    term?), 7 with a stroke, Z also with a stroke.  Also small u with
    a stroke above it in German, left over from the days
    („Sütterlinschrift“) when this was the only distinction between
    written u and n.  None of these had anything to do with computers.

2.  The distinction between O and 0.  Put a cross through the 0 and
    leave the O as it was.  In my experience, this too predated
    computers: I first learnt it round 1963 when trying to become a
    radio amateur, much to the disgust of my maths teacher, who also
    didn't like the hooked 1s and the crossed 7s.

3.  The distinction between O and 0.  The same as before, almost: put
    a cross through the O and leave the 0 normal.  This must be a US
    usage, since O and Ø are both valid (and different) letters in
    some Nordic languages.

Greg
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