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I've noticed that people coming from a English-speaking countries tend to write "1" without the upstroke and "7" without a dash:

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which differs from the way the numbers are usually written in continental Europe1:

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Is there any particular (historical?) reason for this?

1 According to Wikipedia, "most people in Continental Europe, Latin America, and New England write 7 with a line in the middle ("7"), sometimes with the top line crooked."

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One small point: if you write the 1 with the upstroke and the 7 without the dash, they can get confused. – Peter Shor Mar 28 '12 at 22:55
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My postman brother tells me I'm atypical because I always put a slash through 0's in addresses to distinguish them from the letter O. But as Peter says, if we all omit both the serif on 1, and the dash on 7, there's no problem with those two. The continental system is no more "legible" in real terms. It's just excessively ornate for no useful gain - but they'd have a major problem trying to organise a switchover now! – FumbleFingers Mar 28 '12 at 23:25
Nice question; unfortunately, off topic. – jwpat7 Mar 29 '12 at 3:24

closed as off topic by Robusto, FumbleFingers, aedia λ, Daniel δ, jwpat7 Mar 29 '12 at 3:23

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3 Answers

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Many of us in the U.S. learned the Palmer Method of handwriting, which has a straight numeral one and no dash on the seven. See numerals at bottom right: Palmer Alphabet

When I took engineering drafting in college, though, I was taught to put a slash through the seven (as in your photo) to distinguish it from the one, and still do so. So some people trained in certain fields probably do use the seven with the dash. I'm not sure about why Palmer chose these shapes for his numerals, though. I would refer you to the Wikipedia entry on the Palmer Method of Penmanship.

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We learned to cross the zero to distinguish it from the letter o as well. – KitFox♦ Mar 28 '12 at 23:27
Yes, we did too. (I still do that too.) – JLG Mar 28 '12 at 23:34
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From the evolution of the glyph section of the Wikipedia entry for '7':

As is the case with the European glyph, the Cham and Khmer glyph for 7 also evolved to look like their glyph for 1, though in a different way, so they were also concerned with making their 7 more different. For the Khmer this often involved adding a horizontal line above the glyph. This is analogous to the horizontal stroke through the middle that is sometimes used in handwriting in the Western world but which is almost never used in computer fonts.

It goes on to say this regarding usage of the horizontal line:

Most people in Continental Europe, Latin America, and New England[citation needed] write 7 with a line in the middle ("7"), sometimes with the top line crooked. The line through the middle is useful to clearly differentiate the character from the number one, as these can appear similar when written in certain styles of handwriting. This glyph is used in official handwriting rules for primary school in Russia, Ukraine, Romania and other Slavic countries.

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'[citation needed]' is a clue that the wikipedia article might have no basis in reality. 'New England' is both very specific and does not accord with my experience. – Mitch Mar 29 '12 at 13:21
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No, doesn't it exist a precisely historical reason. In (continental) Europe, where I live, anyone does what h/she want. While a few persons use top line crooked, other avoid dash and upstroke. Tough, it is interesting to notice that sans-serif font, like Helvetica, have influenced handwriting style, in the way you have illustrated, since 1950. Probably in North America and England the Helvetica essentialist style has had more influence than in other country.

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Carlo, you can edit your post by clicking edit (in gray, below your answer). Try right-clicking within the edit box and see if you have a spell-check option to highlight misspelled words. – jwpat7 Mar 29 '12 at 3:27

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