A font was the en_US version of fount. A fount was a particular example of a typeface. A typeface is something like TNR or Calibri. They all seem to have been munged into a single set of synonyms except for fount which has been dropped (so why do we still have colour and all that stuff)?

A print, then typewriter, then computer typeface emulates a written script but also takes on a life of its own. Handwriting in english is mostly gibberish these days because hardly anyone uses a pen anymore! However, it is mostly "cursive" and cursive is not the same as serif and sans.

English prides itself on not having diacritics, or accents or whatever that thing where you merge a A and E is called, unless they are borrowed: in which case all bets are off; or there is an r in the month and the moon is in Venus.

So you want a font and it needs to look lovely. If your O and 0 are not differentiated then you have failed. 2:Z?, l:L:1? Good.

I use a german style slash across the number seven when I write the number, even though my number one is nothing like a german one, which looks more like a lambda. I also slash a lone capital Zed. I slash a zero: 0 and dot an O when writing code on paper. Basically, when I write with a pen you are in absolutely no doubt what character I have written, unless the DTs kick in 8)

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irishcoffee 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I thought I was the only one that still crossed a seven and slashed a zero. I don’t dot an ‘O’ however.

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FeteCommuniste 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

I cross my sevens, slash my zeros, and use a hook on lowercase T to avoid confusion with plus signs. I think I developed the hook-T habit in college math classes.

	▲	irishcoffee 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I didn’t even think about that one, I do that as well, and for the exact same reason! That’s too funny.

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IggleSniggle 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's good, because the "O" should never be dotted. You use slash OR dot for zero, unless you vaguely remember them both as useful for disambiguating but forgot that both marks are for zero and vary by typeface. Mostly dotted zero was just during the dot matrix era. I wouldn't mind being shown counter examples.

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Jailbird 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I cross my sevens!

I'll consider starting to slash my zeros. Seems legit.

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vintermann 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Øh, that isn't ideal for Danes, Norwegians or people who regularly deal with empty sets.

	▲	gerdesj 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Fair enough, but I was whittering on about English and not Dansk or Norsk. The empty set should be obvious from context.
	▲	zzo38computer a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		What I had done sometimes when writing slashed zero by a pencil and needed the disambiguation (which is not that common in my writing but it does happen sometimes that it will be important), is for the slash the other way for zero, to avoid being confused with slashed O or the symbol for empty sets. Atkinson Hyperlegible font (mentioned in another comment) also works that way, too; the slash for zero is the other way than the slashed O in languages that use that.

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davchana 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

In india its considered bad omen to slash 7s.

	▲	Fnoord 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		We are trying to summon a Leviathan here.

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dragonwriter 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> English prides itself on not having diacritics, or accents or whatever that thing where you merge a A and E is called, unless they are borrowed

Its called the letter “ash” and its borrowed from... (Old) English. Though its functionally reverted to being a ligature, which is what is was before it was a letter.

(Also, English has &, which was a letter even more recently—its current name being taken from the way it was recited as part of the alphabet [“and, per se, and”], including the effect of slurring with speed—and which also originated as a ligature.)

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buntsai 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The use of the "font" spelling variant rather than "fount" is any case a clearer indication of etymology. After all, a "fount" of types refers not to its role as a fountain of printing (fons fontis L -> fontaine OF -> fountain) but the pouring out, melting and casting of lead (fundo fundere fudu fusum [fused!] L -> fondre / fonte F).

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FeteCommuniste 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The linked A+E thing is called a ligature:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ligature_(writing)

Same root as "ligament" and "ligand."

	▲	vintermann 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		It's a ligature in modern English, but it's a proper letter in Anglo-Saxon. Ligatures or contextual letter variants (such as s being written with a different symbol when it's at the end of a word) are a sin to encode as characters. They should be part of the presentation layer, not the content layer! And don't even get me started on OCR which thinks such things are good to "preserve".

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DocTomoe 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

There's no pride in not having diacritics, it's a sign of an insufficient script. It's the reason why English writing gives no hint of pronunciation.