European numerals

Old-style numerals

The numerals used by Western countries have two forms: "lining" ("in-line" or "full-height") figures as seen on a typewriter and taught in North America, and "old-style" figures, in which numerals 0, 1, and 2 are at x-height; numerals 6 and 8 have bowls within x-height, and ascenders; numerals 3, 5, 7, and 9 have descenders from x-height; and the numeral 4 rests along the baseline.

British presses have been partial to "old-style" numerals, even though typewriters cannot print them and they are not (yet) assigned corresponding Unicode values. This has led to confusion, as the old-style numeral "one" can resemble a capital "I" reduced to x-height. In the U.S., a typewritten "I" refers to Roman numeral one; during the typewriter age, the minuscule "l" was first used for it, before the separate numeral character "1" was added to keyboards. A prime example of this confusion is the case of a British typist sending a letter to an editor, as seen in the periodical "Spaceflight", about the space flight "Apollo II," for which the reading "Apollo Eleven" would be intended, whereas this would be read by Americans as being Roman numerals, as a non-existent "Apollo the Second."

British use of Roman numerals declined during the 20th century, having previously been used for aircraft (e.g., Fokker D.VII, Ki-84-III, and Spitfire Mk I) almost to the end of World War II. A policy of the Labour Government of 1945 discontinued their use, although they continue to be used in the U.S. and Germany (e.g., Douglas D-558-II, Saturn V). They are still used in complex outlines, in which the structure of relations is necessary to be memorized, rather than simple mods of a computer program, which aren't going to be intercorrelated.Clarifyme|date=March 2008

lashed zero

A distinction exists between the Danish/Norwegian letter "Ø," the Latin letter "O," and the numeral "0". [cite book|author=Cajori, Florian|title=A History of Mathematical Notations|location=Chicago | publisher=Open Court Pub. Co|year=1928-1929|id=ISBN 0-486-67766-4] Handwritten data to be typed into a computer necessitates having a distinction between the oh and the zero. In English-speaking countries, zero was often slashed in technical writing, and was used in many computer keyboards, screens, and printing methods. Some early computerized systems for managers assumed that the numeral would be entered more often than the letter, so they slashed the oh instead. In time this became a minority practice, and it is very confusing for Danish and Norwegian speaking people.

There are three ways of ticking the numeral zero to make it distinct from the letters O and Ø. A tick in the upper right corner derives from the earlier practice, a tick in the upper left corner is used to prevent confusion with all earlier practices, and the very-low-resolution typeface "Fixedsys" has an internal tick, that does not extend beyond the bowl, in both the upper right and lower left. This is the most elegant, but it would take quite a flourish to write it on hundreds of inventory tags. Scandinavian countries prefer a numeral zero with a dot in the middle, although low-resolution displays can confuse this with a numeral eight, and it takes longer to assuredly make a dot with a ballpoint pen than making a tick.

Other variations

The "Crossed Seven" is commonly used throughout Europe, but is sporadically used in the United States, and it is not permitted to be written on some inventory tags that are optically read by computers. This modification of the number seven is caused by the numeral one with a long initial stroke and no underserif. There are two more forms of the numeral seven used in France, as seen on Citroën cowls:
*numeral one with a long initial stroke and an underserif; and
*numeral one with a long initial stroke that starts below the underserif and is concave upward.

The Germans have used a numeral one that has two half-serifs so it looks somewhat like a 'Z'. The Germans use a numeral four that looks like a lightning bolt, and in some areas of Eastern Europe, as seen on Romanian tanks, there is a numeral four that does not have a closed loop, but has a Greek cross form of strokes. Usually the numeral two is not slashed, whereas the letter Z is, because handwritten form could be confused with the numeral two.

References