Slashed letter O, unslashed letter zero

[Chuck Guzis]

On 4/26/22 19:05, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote:
> I remember about 30 years ago, a registration card for a Microsoft
> product had specific forms that they wanted for certain letters, for the
> sake of a slightly inadequate handwriting recognition program.  Among
> those was "ticked letter O".  A round 'O", with an extra mark on the
> upper right. Like a slashed zero, with the slash going from upper right,
> but stopping before the center of the character.  Or like an inverted 'Q'
> At the time, I thought that that surely would increase confusion between
> zero, letter 'O' and letter 'Q'.

All of that could have been avoided had we all adopted OCR-A
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCR-A)

CDC actually adopted OCR-A as their official internal font.  My office
typewriter (Olivetti) had such a font.   I hated it.

Finally, I managed to snag an IBM Model D Executive when one of the
departments shuffled off to Minnesota.  ("Appropriating" equipment when
departments moved or projects shut down was a favorite hobby.  All such
equipment never left the facility, so I wasn't really doing anything
wrong, but confusing the bean counters).   I had the best-looking office
memos bar none.

OCR-B was a bit less offensive, but the difference between capital oh
and zero was less apparent.

--Chuck