The top of the numeral 4 should be open NEVER closed.

Numbers from One to Ten should be written as words. 11 and beyond are written in numerals.

When typing an address in a letter, do not separate house number and street on separate lines. Month, day , and year should be on same line. Don't split the Area Code from 7-digit number on separate lines.

Op, who made you the handwriting God?

Fuck you. We all use computers now anyway

Thank you, Strunk and White.

R2 I will type any way I fucking please.

It puts the lotion in the basket . . .

Op, lines through 7's, z's and 0's are generally European and make sense. This is how you distinguish them from similar letters and numbers.

7 could be mistaken for a 1, O for an o, z for a 7

Home computers in the 1970s and early 1980s used to have the number 0 with a line through it.

I assume O/P was born in Alabama and never left the state?

MUST. CONTROL. EVERY. THING!

R7, we bought a 7oo!

We bought a ƶoo! (z can be mistaken for 2)

I always give the seven and z the strikethrough flair. No apologies.

It makes me feel glamourous, like Marlene Dietrich, every time I write a shopping list for Costco.

As usual, a DL OP is wrong about everything.

[quote]This is how you distinguish them from similar letters and numbers.

I write legibly and no one, NOT ONE PERSON, has ever mistook one of my 2s for a z nor 7s for a 1.

r13

You probably also call the elevator, a lift; the bathroom, a loo; and the first floor, a ground floor.

Well toots, this IS NOT Europe. If you're in EUROPE fine, but this ISN'T, so get with the program. This website isn't a .uk or any other stupid site, it's an American site.

Wow! Someone got out of bed on the wrong side this morning.

Europeans used to, and still do sometimes, make a slash across the middle of the number 7.

This is to prevent confusion. A number 1 can, in some circumstances, be written similar to a number 7, on purpose or sometimes by accident. The horizontal slash distinguishes between a '1 and a '7'.

Some of the rules you deride so gleefully are simply devices of necessity from the age when handwriting was used more widely.

People who follow rules blindly are cogs in the machine.

Hopefully you'll get a better night's sleep tonight and you won't be such a knobhead tomorrow.

[quote] Numbers from One to Ten should be written as words. 11 and beyond are written in numerals.

This is or was AP Style, I think. I learned it in college, studying journalism. I still use this rule in business letters and contracts even though I am not a reporter.

I never heard a complaint about a handwritten "4" with a closed top, however. That's personal style, right?

A crossed "7" still reminds me of my first boyfriend!

You know r13, Marlene most likely would have ADORED Costco. Her two favorites were stationery and hardware stores and she'd try to hit them in all of the cities on her travels.

R15 we're sure you meant to say "mistaken," not "mistook.:"

r19, I can only dream of meeting Dietrich at Costco and comparing handwriting with our shopping lists. We'd go arm-in-arm through the refrigerated dairy room, with her quite warm draped in furs, as we muse on the price of organic milk. I'll bet she'd have a supremely stylish, Old World manner of checking off items as we load 40 lb. bags of cat litter into the cart.

Is r16 Donald Trump? I don't know who else would be so MAGA-centric and would use such an ancient word as "toots." At least long-dead slang will make my time-traveling warehouse shopping companion Marlene Dietrich feel more comfortable in this era.

Fuck off OP.

[quote]The top of the numeral 4 should be open NEVER closed.

Funny how at my end, the 4 shows up as open.

I work with a lot of biological samples that are frozen at -80 degrees C. The condensation when you take them out of the freezer requires that you wipe it with your glove-covered fingers; often the ink wipes off with the ice.

The nice thing about these things (lines thru zero's, sevens and the letter Z) assist in determining what the writing says. A "Z" with a line thru it is clearly not a number 2. A zero with a line thru it isa zero and not a capital O. A seven with a line thru it is not a number 1.

Marlene was, at heart, a hausfrau r21. It surprised Bette when she would show up at the Hollywood Canteen. If she was there to dance with the service men she'd glam up, otherwise she was perfectly at home with an apron serving donuts and coffee. Don't be surprised if when she meets you at Costco she's wearing dungarees.

Europeans tend to write their 1s with a long, upswept serif.

R12 - Dates, written as numbers, should always be YYYY-MM-DD

Tell me, what is this? 04-03-12

Again

Why is I and l the same character on computers?

Capital eye/small ell

Year first on digital dates may make sense, but it confuses the hell out of Americans, including me.

Some products say "use by 18 J 15" or worse, "18/1/20" and I'm stumped for a bit.

I do like the new trend in speaking to say "15, one-five" or "60, six-zero" for clarity.

And 'Dietrich at Costco' is a movie or play I would pay good money to watch.

R16, England isn't in Europe either.

When a friend from Germany applied for a New York driver license he wrote 02/09/1984. He was born September 2, 1984. When he went for a change of address and was asked his birth date, they thought he was lying. They showed February 9, 1984. Had to show Passport to get it corrected.

I don't even handwrite anything anymore so this shit is stupid.

[quote]Numbers from One to Ten should be written as words. 11 and beyond are written in numerals.

Except when the number is the first word in the sentence. Then you spell out the number. Also, there was no need to capitalize "one" and "ten".

[quote]Numbers from one to ten should be written as words. Eleven and beyond are written in numerals.

Fixed it for you.

What is it with people that want to control every aspect of others lives. Write the way you want OP and then go fuck yourself and leave the rest of us alone.

As you can see 4 doesn't close on my Chrome browser. But the key on the computer shows it closed.

Them's some boundaries you've stated, OP.

Oh, dear, OP.

You do realize that you began two sentences with a conjunction, right?

Aside from that, you're missing a comma in the second one, and to top it off, you included a comma splice.

OP what are your rules on douching?

R35, "What is it with people WHO..."

Back in the 1980s a friend borrowed my typewriter. Later, he complained that it didn’t have a key for the number one. I told him it had to have a key for one. He said he carefully went through every key looking for it, but it wasn’t there. He was frustrated. After I got it back, I realized that, to save keyboard space, there was no key for one. You used the “el” key for one.

After spending most of my life living outside the US, I never assume about numbers, letters or dates written numerically, find out where the writer is from so that I know whether 2/3/16 is March 2, 2016 or February 3, 2016. I write dates as numeric day alpha month numeric year, e.g., 3 Feb 2016, to avoid confusion. Older Europeans may remember when the date was written numeric day roman numeral month numeric year, e.g., 3 VI 2016 (3 June 2016) .

R26 Fuck off. You claim Europeans write their 1s that way. That would mean every single fucking one of them does it and I have never seen that in my life.

I do genealogical research in the Boston area. In the 19th century, the font they used, after weathering, makes it hard to discern the difference between:

0, 6, 8, and 9

1, 4 and 7

2, 3 and 5

I called the Archeology Dept of MIT and got a tip on some software that can accentuate photos. The guy uses it on Mayan gliphs and it’s not expensive, so, I’m looking forward to that.

Just out of college, I used to date business letters "21 January 1992" and such. I thought it looked very sophisticated, and sort of still do. I stopped doing it after awhile because Americans don't like it.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember ABC World News Tonight used the same date format in its opening, in those days. Peter Jennings' choice? He was a Canadian who lived a lot of his life in Europe, after all.

Dear OP has never been outside the United States. Can you imagine the fits of fury she would have dealing with Canadians or Mexicans or heaven forbid, Europeans?

I have really bad handwriting. I've tried to do better, but it's a struggle. I cross my 7s and Zs, and have a terrible time writing 8s.

No, R1.

"Ten" is written as a word, not a numeral in AP style, which is the only style that matters for everyday use.

Grow up.

sorry

fergot my pitcher

An enclosed closed number four 4️⃣

4k U, OP.

Instructions for illiterate OP.

[QUOTE] Had to show Passport to get it corrected.

Oh hi! Svetlana

Write as illegibly as possible on those cards you fill out on the plane before going thru customs on international flights.

Old advice. Hard to catch you in a lie if they can't tell what you wrote down. Cross them sevens and zeros and leave out the commas, bitches