Slashed letter O, unslashed letter zero

Fred Cisin cisin at xenosoft.com
Tue Apr 26 21:05:57 CDT 2022


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'.


Yes, we were getting used to Palm's "Graffiti" stylized letters.


Yes, the confusion between slashing zero VS slashing letter 'O' DID 
resolve itself, as such things will do, as soon as everybody who slashed 
letter 'O' had died off.

I understand that some European countries had more orless problems with it 
than we did, particularly those who already had "altered" characters 
included in their languages.

--
Grumpy Ol' Fred     		cisin at xenosoft.com


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