The stress I get when I have to enter my car licence into the ticket machine and I get the 0 or O mixed up in my head and worry I am going to get fined.
The cyclical nature of trying to demarcate O from 0, in which the form follows the frustration, is not unlike trying to learn a new language whose teacher just absolutely won't stop throwing in random slang that will never be necessary and failing every test.
In French, Ô is used to address divinities, revered people, or personifications. It is distinguished from "Oh!", used for surprise, Deception, recognition, etc., and "O", the letter, used as a surname and for the contraction of West.
It depends on if the slash "sticks out" on either side of the 0. Completely contained it's zero, sticking out it's the empty set. If the line is closer to vertical it's phi.
Ø, ø, is the 28th letter of the Norwegian alphabet.
Ø originally comes from a combination of o and e: œ. In Latin, oe, which was originally a diphthong, was later pronounced as ø. In its Ö, ö form, the ¨ or ʹʹ represents a small Gothic e written above the letter.
Has anyone actually seen a slashed O to mean the letter 'O'?
In the old days, last century, I have always seen O with a horizontal bar (a bit like a theta) to mean the letter O. I'm pretty sure that was the case on IBM/ICL line printers I've used.
In my first computer job (in the old days), we had to use a slashed O (not a theta) to mean the letter O in one computer system while at college we had to use a slashed 0 for a zero. I always had to think to remember which to use... And I'd completely forgotten about that until now.
disambiguation noun
the act or process of distinguishing between similar things, meanings, names, etc., in order to make the meaning or interpretation more clear or certain:
Word sense disambiguation helps determine which meaning a word has in any given context.
And the Ø is a Scandinavian only letter in the Alphabet. We have 3 letters others don't: Æ, Ø, Å.
Other Western European countries has letters we don't. Germany, Iceland. Language is a fascinating thing
Yep. I type with a Scandinavian keyboard, so I don't have your special ones. That's why I just mentioned Iceland and Germany. I can't type the German ones either 🙂
i do exactly that but i make sure to differentiate the two. empty set is a small circle with a slash going through it and poking out of both sides, while zero is a big, capital o-sized oval with a slash going from one end to the other without poking through either end
For Y2K I was at a large finance institution. I spent a lot of time converting every date in the trading system into ISO format. I get yelled at by the Big Boss. I then spent a lot of time converting them back into what he called "standard format". I was annoyed on New Year's day when nothing broke.
Gonna go against the grain, M/D/Y is better: as it's most convenient for quickly visually scanning to find an file or accounting entry. If dates are already in order, year is usually a given or infrequent to matter, and days too frequent to easily parse. Month is like chapters in a book, its best.
I personally prefer YYYY-MM-DD. It makes logical sense to me. Even as a child growing up in the USA, MM/DD/YY(YY) seemed illogical to me, though I at least now understand the historical reasons why it came about in the first place.
Months are only like chapters in a book, if short stories are all you read. For longer works, you need the year too.
Going from largest unit (year) to smaller unit (month) to even smaller unit (day) makes the most sense and you can easily tag on hour, minute, second, ... if needed.
Who even slashes the o? Non-English doesn't count, this reads like there are English-speaking o-slashing maniacs.
In mil comms school they did teach us ways to make handwriting absolutely unambiguous; marking 7s and Zs horizontally in the middle, and slashing zeros. wtf is slashed-o.
The Ø is the 28th letter in the Norwegian/Danish alphabet. In Swedish the same letter is written Ö. For the 0 with a slash I have no idea. But if Wikipedia says so…. 😂🤣😂🤣
I used to write them that way, until my third grade math teacher suggested it was slowing me down. Since then, I just do a vertical line. It was a game changer for me, honestly. This can conflict with lower-case Ls, but I usually write in cursive anyway
Same. But I had to because of how I write my 2's. My lab was very strict about this kind of stuff to prevent accidental errors in lot number recording.
yeah, same. especially because I write in all caps (since it's my muscle memory at this point, idk why I decided to start doing it but oh well) and 2s and Zs look exactly the same without the -.
this is something we were specifically taught to do in a-level further maths (which is like. half of first year uni physics maths for comparison) to distinguish from 2 and from ζ
I can't help it I grew up a technologist and my early jobs were in IMACS and inventory control. As a tadpole i got my knuckles rapped if I didn't copy a serial number with slashed zeros or 7s. Holy shit I think I might have stumbled across Dickensian Cyberpunk.
Numbers were originally drawn according to the number of angles each drawing had. The number 7 has 7 angles if you put a slash though it and add another line to the bottom.
This seems like a place I can complain that different cases of Russian words, spelled differently, are pronounced EXACTLY the same. Also the vowels seem to be guidelines, not rules., and most of them are really schwa.
I’m old so still do old things, occasionally write code/pseudocode in the garden on a pad and always slash those zeroes.
Slashed letter ‘O’s can do one.
As I finished reading this a sharp pain pierced my skull...yes, finally, my brain is trying to stab itself to death. At last. All it took was this paradox of good intentions gone horribly horribly wrong.
I once met an American girl, and when we said goodbye I got her email, containing 'øoop', written on a paper note. As a Norwegian I didn't know Ø meant zero, and tried to write it with actual Ø (it's in our alphabet). Of course it didn't work, and we never spoke again
Well, I learned something new today! I remember our Fortran instructor calling the multiplication symbol a “beesting.” That’s it for my knowledge of Fortran after 50 years.
If I needed math support in a COBOL program, I wrote the subroutine in SAS or SPSS. Most of our math was statistics.
I think the slash in the null set starts and ends outside the zero, while the slash from the normal zero for distinguishing 0 from O starts and ends in the line of the zero.
Not sure if it's standard but I've noticed it that way
That makes sense…a slight nuance that clarifies it. I have been refraining from using it in my middle school math classes, but now will further explain. Thank you for the information.
When the slashed nought began to be replaced by a pointy one, because the slashed one suddenly seemed 80s and nerdy, variant capital O's sprang up - squarish ones, and also one with a central dot if I remember rightly.
Em dashes separate thoughts — where you might also use parenthesis — while en dashes separate ranges, such as red–violet or 1986–2025. Hyphens are similar-looking but shorter, and used for joining words.
Oh, that was part of my learning experience! My brain went "Why are there three when one should suffice?"
But throw in the fact they are phonetically similar, and I hate them even more.
They're called that because the em dash should be the width of the character "M" and the en dashes should be the width of the character "N" (in whatever font they're being rendered in)! Typography is weird lol
That said, you really never have to even think about them unless you're writing/editing professional copy, 99.9% of people will never notice if you just a hyphen in all of those cases.
Fun fact: While the Danish and Norwegian alphabet does have the letter Ø, the Swedish alphabet does not. Instead they have the letter Ö, meaning that the Swedish chef actually doesn't say BØRK BØRK BØRK at all. At least it isn't spelled that way.
Trump: "The Dems taking away your 0, no more 0, a $10 bill will be worth $1, a $100 bill will be worth $10
.....??...💬 will be worth Ten, you can't trust the Dems.
Comments
"What's yarrow?" she asked.
- Very good question. I looked it up in the pocket OED...
"Yarrow: a kind of milfoil"
"So what's milfoil?"
- Had to look that up too....
"See yarrow"
And I'm going to use that word (disambiguation) again in a moment.
Ø 0 O o'rileys
(Chat this is a joke don't kill me)
( ) | |
-----\\ | |
\\ |
| |
(Actually it's its own letter. In Welsh, it just means the vowel sound is lengthened).
Ø originally comes from a combination of o and e: œ. In Latin, oe, which was originally a diphthong, was later pronounced as ø. In its Ö, ö form, the ¨ or ʹʹ represents a small Gothic e written above the letter.
It is the sme sound as the French "Eu", like in Pasteur.
The W was just VV for years. We should go back to early modern English...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhFgKNMmRL0
In the old days, last century, I have always seen O with a horizontal bar (a bit like a theta) to mean the letter O. I'm pretty sure that was the case on IBM/ICL line printers I've used.
*being kicked in the stomach while chewing an apple*
*vomiting*
*being kicked in the stomach while smoking*
From a distance
It seems the original post extracted out the funniest part to really focus on the hilarity.
Fnv my good friend
The slashed zero is just intuitive
I swear not all Danes are psychopaths.
the act or process of distinguishing between similar things, meanings, names, etc., in order to make the meaning or interpretation more clear or certain:
Word sense disambiguation helps determine which meaning a word has in any given context.
This is part of why Australian Indigenous people use cardinal directions instead. North is north.
Other Western European countries has letters we don't. Germany, Iceland. Language is a fascinating thing
Really it’s an ambiambiguation page
And another to differentiate a poorly drawn 8 from a B.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
🐟
https://xkcd.com/927/
counterargument 2: usb
https://xkcd.com/1179/
It's less ambiguous and is conveniently in numerical order for filing too
Months are only like chapters in a book, if short stories are all you read. For longer works, you need the year too.
Going from largest unit (year) to smaller unit (month) to even smaller unit (day) makes the most sense and you can easily tag on hour, minute, second, ... if needed.
In mil comms school they did teach us ways to make handwriting absolutely unambiguous; marking 7s and Zs horizontally in the middle, and slashing zeros. wtf is slashed-o.
Handwriting with a freaking serif.
This is an L.
They can't even put serifs on capital I so it looks more distinct from lower case l
It could be Lovecraftian Cyberpunk.
(But seriously lmfao)
I know English aslo sucks.
Slashed letter ‘O’s can do one.
RE-ambiguation.
(I O for "Ile d'Oléron")
If I needed math support in a COBOL program, I wrote the subroutine in SAS or SPSS. Most of our math was statistics.
Yes I adopted the style anyway and got marked down by a teacher for it, why do you ask?
Thanks for listening to my TED talk!
I think the slash in the null set starts and ends outside the zero, while the slash from the normal zero for distinguishing 0 from O starts and ends in the line of the zero.
Not sure if it's standard but I've noticed it that way
Both alike in dignity,
On fair Wikipedia,
Where we set our scene…
Just like real journalism!
Um, where does "oh" come in all this?!
GOD IS DEAD!
so many ways to make a ⭕️
A very common way of expressing confusion in Denmark where the letter "ø" is part of the alphabet.
But throw in the fact they are phonetically similar, and I hate them even more.
#PrinceWilliamVirginia
https://bsky.app/profile/jasonkbates.bsky.social/post/3lij7bzq5vk26
.....??...💬 will be worth Ten, you can't trust the Dems.