# The letters J, Z, and the number 7 **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [October 4, 2007, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-letters-j-z-and-the-number-7/421558 "2007-10-04T21:57:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2007, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-letters-j-z-and-the-number-7/421558/41 "2007-10-05T16:39:13Z")
[QUOTE=Autolycus] Ditto. [/QUOTE] I’m opposite. I put lines through my 7s always, my Zs less often, and I never put a hat on my Js. The 7s, in particular, is a European habit picked up from my mom and from living out there for awhile. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2007, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-letters-j-z-and-the-number-7/421558/42 "2007-10-05T17:04:47Z")
The line at the top of the capital J is a serif. So are the lines at the top and bottom of the capital I. I was taught in high school art class that (at least when you’re doing lettering in any official capacity) it’s wrong to write them that way if you’re printing in a “font” that is otherwise sans-serif. ---
**Author:** ![Silver\_Tyger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/fbc32d/32.png) [@Silver\_Tyger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Silver_Tyger)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2007, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-letters-j-z-and-the-number-7/421558/43 "2007-10-05T17:13:40Z")
When I learned to write, I did all my stuff like it appears on a computer screen. So my nines are upside down sixes, my fours are closed, and my sevens don’t have a line. Capital J and I sometimes have the lines. I’ve started writing in small caps so it’s actually legible and the ‘capital’ caps have the lines. Sometimes the small caps have a dot. Zeroes get a slash when I have to distinguish it from Os. Sometimes ones are just a line, sometimes they have the top and the bottom. ---
**Author:** ![Ghanima](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Ghanima](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ghanima)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2007, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-letters-j-z-and-the-number-7/421558/44 "2007-10-05T17:28:10Z")
My first name starts with a J and I always put the line at the top - and when I sign my name I never use the stupid cursive J, I always put a block capital J followed by the rest of my name in cursive. I also put a line across my sevens, but I learned that in Germany. I never use a line on my Z’s, though. ---
**Author:** ![Madd\_Maxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Madd\_Maxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Madd_Maxx)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2007, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-letters-j-z-and-the-number-7/421558/45 "2007-10-05T17:57:31Z")
I cross the 7’s, Z’s, I add the diagonal slash through zero’s, and I add the little flag to my one’s. I have terrible hand writing and without these clues I’d never be able to read what I’ve written. Especially in my engineering/math class notes. ---
**Author:** ![Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@Maggie\_the\_Ocelot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maggie_the_Ocelot)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2007, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-letters-j-z-and-the-number-7/421558/46 "2007-10-05T18:06:38Z")
I’ve crossed my sevens ever since college German class. Our teacher explained that it was because ones always have the little upswoop, and so it was to determine which was which - she’d mark us off, actually, if we didn’t upswoop the ones and cross the sevens when numbering our homework answers. I’ve seen some German people’s handwriting where the upswoop is so prominent on the ones that they look like inverted capital Vs. Caps at the top of Js, always. Crossed Zs, never. Also, when writing in cursive I include a little hook at the crest of my lower-case 'c’s when they start a word. It’s how I was taught to do it, but I rarely see anyone else use it. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2007, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-letters-j-z-and-the-number-7/421558/47 "2007-10-05T18:10:57Z")
[Here is the entry on 0 from the Jargon File](http://catb.org/jargon/html/0/numeral-zero.html), detailing some of the ways numeric zero has been graphically represented by computers: > [@](#): > > Numeric zero, as opposed to the letter ‘O’ (the 15th letter of the English alphabet). In their unmodified forms they look a lot alike, and various kluges invented to make them visually distinct have compounded the confusion. If your zero is center-dotted and letter-O is not, or if letter-O looks almost rectangular but zero looks more like an American football stood on end (or the reverse), you’re probably looking at a modern character display (though the dotted zero seems to have originated as an option on IBM 3270 controllers). If your zero is slashed but letter-O is not, you’re probably looking at an old-style ASCII graphic set descended from the default typewheel on the venerable ASR-33 Teletype (Scandinavians, for whom Ø is a letter, curse this arrangement). (Interestingly, the slashed zero long predates computers; Florian Cajori’s monumental _A History of Mathematical Notations_ notes that it was used in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.) If letter-O has a slash across it and the zero does not, your display is tuned for a very old convention used at IBM and a few other early mainframe makers (Scandinavians curse this arrangement even more, because it means two of their letters collide). Some Burroughs/Unisys equipment displays a zero with a reversed slash. Old CDC computers rendered letter O as an unbroken oval and 0 as an oval broken at upper right and lower left. And yet another convention common on early line printers left zero unornamented but added a tail or hook to the letter-O so that it resembled an inverted Q or cursive capital letter-O (this was endorsed by a draft ANSI standard for how to draw ASCII characters, but the final standard changed the distinguisher to a tick-mark in the upper-left corner). Are we sufficiently confused yet? ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2007, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-letters-j-z-and-the-number-7/421558/48 "2007-10-05T22:00:54Z")
\>it is European to write 1s with a little swoop leading up to the straight line A few Germans I know write the swoop much bigger than the verticle slope, so it looks like an uppercase Lambda with the left side as much as half again as long as the right side. Since it’s not that rare for a 1 to appear by itself, I often had trouble at first noticing that it was even a character, let alone which one. ---
**Author:** ![Swampwolf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Swampwolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Swampwolf)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2007, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-letters-j-z-and-the-number-7/421558/49 "2007-10-05T22:03:48Z")
Can we get an SDSAB member in here to tell us what that line is called? ---
**Author:** ![Flutterby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Flutterby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flutterby)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2007, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-letters-j-z-and-the-number-7/421558/50 "2007-10-05T22:17:18Z")
My J always has a line across the top, and my 7s have a line through the middle (with a little dangly line at the front top). My Zs look nothing like my 2s though as I loop around the bottom of them instead of coming to a point and straight back. Like Ghanima I use capital letters in printing, followed by the cursive, for any handwriting I am doing. ---
**Author:** ![SailedTheOceanBlue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/85f322/32.png) [@SailedTheOceanBlue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SailedTheOceanBlue)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2007, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-letters-j-z-and-the-number-7/421558/51 "2007-10-05T23:26:43Z")
I was taught this in Grade 7 Algebra so as to distinguish between 2/z and 1/7. If you’re crazy about this point, so was my math professor. ---
**Author:** ![sturmhauke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e47c2d/32.png) [@sturmhauke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sturmhauke)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2007, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-letters-j-z-and-the-number-7/421558/52 "2007-10-06T00:38:28Z")
I use a line through 7 and Z, no hat on my J, a slash through zeroes. I also write a and t the same as they appear in this font, as opposed to most people’s hand writing I’ve seen where a is sort of like o with a little tail, and t is like +. As for the null set, I write that as a very small circle with a large slash through it, or I just use {} instead. ---
**Author:** ![eleanorigby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee7513/32.png) [@eleanorigby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eleanorigby)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2007, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-letters-j-z-and-the-number-7/421558/53 "2007-10-06T00:52:13Z")
I learned in German class that German 7s were done with the slash, as were Zs. Never heard about the 1s, but saw them written that way by my Belgian pen pals. Since they also wrote their zs and 7s that way, I deduced that it was a European thing. My youngest son’s name starts with J–of course it has a line across the top. I learned the Palmer method of cursive. My kids learned D’Nelean (no idea how to spell it). It shapes the letters differently. Perhaps your wife was taught a different method of penmanship? ---
**Author:** ![sturmhauke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e47c2d/32.png) [@sturmhauke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sturmhauke)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2007, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-letters-j-z-and-the-number-7/421558/54 "2007-10-06T01:26:41Z")
I despise modern cursive styles. They’re all ugly and awkward. I abandoned it in 4th grade and never looked back, except for that annoying section on the SATs where you had to copy a block of text in cursive for some arcane reason. Something like, “I hereby certify that I am who I claim to be blah blah blah.” They should teach calligraphy instead. ---
**Author:** ![Geek\_Mecha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecae2f/32.png) [@Geek\_Mecha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Geek_Mecha)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2007, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-letters-j-z-and-the-number-7/421558/55 "2007-10-06T01:40:43Z")
I wasn’t taught to do it, but I write my Zs and 7s with a line through their middles. I don’t need to, as I write both fairly distinctly from the numbers and letters for which they could be mistaken. My Js do not have lines through them. They have long descenders and distinct hooks, so there’s also no mistaking them for anything else. My handwriting quirk, apparently, is to give distinguishing characteristics to letters and numbers that can’t possibly be mistaken for another, while failing to give distinguishing characteristics to the letters and numbers most likely to be mistaken for others. My Is, 1s, and lowercase Ls are written exactly the same way. I put diagonal slashes through zeroes only when there is potential for them to be either zeroes or Os: in passwords, software serial numbers, ID numbers, license plantes, etc. I won’t do it for phone numbers or street numbers or anything else entirely numeric. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-letters-j-z-and-the-number-7/421558.md?page=2)