On 01/03/2017 05:56 PM, John Robertson wrote:

Here in the US, we have very few such 'conventions' as they tend to
confuse some and annoy others. We manage to get along, however.

We also tend to find their use pretentious and/or a refuge for those
with extremely bad handwriting.

DO NOTE, however: Some manufacturers with mixed (alphanumeric) serial
numbers do mark their Zeros either with a slash or bar to distinguish
them from a capital O.

O0

Other possible confusions are not really: 1I, 2Z, 71 not so much.

Which makes good sense in that context.

Now, consider the Euro-British U in words such as colour, Neighbour,
and more.

First started when? Some sources state 1100 AD. How many billions of
them used? Cost per hundred? Remember, these Us use ink, or require
time to write, or typeset, and take up paper space. So, I expect that
$0.01/100 is quite conservative.

Let's be entirely arbitrary and say that such U use comes to about one
billion instances per year, on average, for the last 900 years. And
the cost is US$0.01 per 100. Comes to US$90,000,000. Now, as we are
averaging, that really comes to an average of $45,000,000 for the
entirety.

As we do not have reliable statistics prior to 1700, let's used that
date.

$1 then would be worth $4,000 today. Now, let's use 3% as the average
interest rate and compound it for 900 years. The numbers get quite
staggering.... That first $1 would be worth $514,420,131,371.79 at 3%
compounded monthly.. That is US TRILLIONs with a T.

And, it is still going on. All that ink, paper and time being ****ed
away.

And we worry about bars on 7s.

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA


Interesting, we should ban the "U"s after Qs then as being redundant -
save trillions, ban letters! (ducking)

Silent letters! Knife = Nif. Knight = Nit (silent 'e's, eh?)

While we are at it what is with 'to, too, and two'? Should be just one -
'to'.

Many more trillions saved...

While we're about it, let's get rid of "c": with few exceptions it has
the sound either of "k" or of "s"; and get rid of "x" as well, and
replace it by "ks" (as in Russian).

Perce