the age of the
writer and the place he or she learned to write. Most
Europeans write ones with serifs, but while some of them write normal
serifs, others go full CVS receipt and end up with serifs longer than
the character they're seriffing.
I (raised in England), in my early 50s:
draw a 1 as simply a vertical stroke, no serifs
draw a 7 without any bar, but did see that being used by some while in
middle school
I (a Scot) draw a 1 with a serif and a 7 with a bar (and a Z with a bar)
because it was necessary for university maths not to mix up |, 1, 7, 2 and
Z, and the habit has just stuck. Mathematicians, of course, have lots of
other ways to decorate their fonts.
And I write zero with a slash and O without when clarity requires it (e.g.
copying down serial numbers) and sometimes at other "computing" times too,
though not consistently, because it helped the card-punch-operator.
I did have a summer job as a student at a place which did the 0 and O
the other way round, which caused a bit of confusion at first. I don't
know why, because it wasn't the kind of place which would have been
contrary about something like that. Given that I got the job because the
person I was working for didn't understand IMPLICIT INTEGER and couldn't
see why his FORTRAN wasn't giving him the results he expected, my guess is
that it was just a case of someone hearing about a good idea and just
implementing it in their own way.
--
George D M Ross MSc PhD CEng MBCS CITP
University of Edinburgh, School of Informatics,
Appleton Tower, 11 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, Scotland, EH8 9LE
Mail: gdmr(a)inf.ed.ac.uk Voice: 0131 650 5147
PGP: 1024D/AD758CC5 B91E D430 1E0D 5883 EF6A 426C B676 5C2B AD75 8CC5
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
