Writing 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 - older generation please

[Frank_East]

The numbers1 and 7 as used by the continentals was said to be the downfall of those who came into Britain as German spies after war was declared in September 1939....the first indication that the person was a foreigner.

As regards the closed 4,I think this has its origin in engineering drawing.... blue prints and the like....thus engineers tend to use 4

Here is a little Russian as a serial number as well as my number symbols.

[Dragon]

(Aurel - when I learned to write with ink, I wasn't allowed to use my own fountain pen; I had to learn to write with a nib pen dipped into an ink pot. I was so messy and dripped ink everywhere that the headmaster called me the messiest girl in the school, in front of everyone, and banned me from using ink. I was soooo humiliated. This was in the 1960s.)

As to your copy with the ambiguous numbers, is it possible that the writer didn't want someone to read the numbers easily - that he or she was deliberately making it difficult to read and perhaps even writing in a form of code?

Gwyn

[Magnumbellum]

As someone who has read numerous old manuscript documents, I cannot recollect any occasion of potential confusion between 4 and 9. Certainly,the traditional handwritten 4 was a capital L with a short vertical stroke across the horizontal main stroke, and 9 was vertical stroke with a small loop abutting the left of the top stroke,

I first became aware of "crossed" sevens, when visiting the European continent, and have always regarded it as a continental practice, although I am aware that some British people have adopted it.

With regard to handwritten entries by working class people on official documents, in some cases this might well have been in pencil, given that, even though such people might have been taught to use "nib" pens at school, they would not necessarily have a pen at home, or a bottle of ink. Practically, also, because of lack of efficient writing material, as well as doubts about adequate literacy, including spelling and grammar, it was common for a form to be completed by an interviewer putting the questions to the subject, and writing the answers down, sometimes clarifying confusing answers - I recall a mother giving the birth dates of her children, at which I queried the apparent birth of one child only six months after the previous one; one date was a year out.

[Anneca]

(Aurel - when I learned to write with ink, I wasn't allowed to use my own fountain pen; I had to learn to write with a nib pen dipped into an ink pot. I was so messy and dripped ink everywhere that the headmaster called me the messiest girl in the school, in front of everyone, and banned me from using ink. I was soooo humiliated. This was in the 1960s.)

Gwyn

Gwyn, I know just how humiliated you must have felt as I too messed up big time with my nib pen dipped into an ink pot at school in the 50s. I reckon there was more ink over the wooden desk than on my books and was threatened with having to use chalk and a slate.

My Great Grandfather born in 1833 was educated at Trinity College Dublin but it was not until he graduated and became Headmaster of a boarding school for boys at Killinchy that he owned his first pen with a steel point and an inkwell. It is interesting that although he was well educated his sister was unable to write and signed her name with an ‘x’. Being a farming family I imagine they could only afford to educate possibly the eldest son but not the daughters and like yours were a modest family and certainly not affluent. When his son, my Grandfather, grew up he was given his first fountain pen that had its own self-contained ink in an internal ink reservoir which was filled with an eyedropper. He cherished this pen and took it with him when he enlisted on 20 August 1914. Unfortunately the ink leaked on his new uniform before he was drafted to the Middle East and my Grandmother had difficulty removing the stains so he left the pen behind. I can remember my Father showing me this pen which he kept in a box beside his own pen made of celluloid which had a lever to fill with ink.

Anne

[Aurel Sercu]

Thanks, Grumpy and Dave and Frank East

And yes, I love the 8. Because an 8 is an 8 is an 8 indeed. :-)

***

Chris,

For years I have thought that the bottom line was (is) a 3. Then suddenly (this morning) I thought : "No ! This is a 2 !" For I have seen 2's I think beginning like that.

But now that you compare it with the first line, I ... am changing my mind again. Very probably a ... 3. (Unless I change my mind again tomorrow... :-) )

***

Anneca and Gwyn,

Gwyn, I wonder what the headmaster would have called you if your neighbour had put a living fly in the inkpot, which then crawled out, and onto your sheet of paper ! (But then I guess your neighbour was a girl ? And girls wouldn't do that, would they ? To flies I mean.) Well, my neighbour was a boy (of course). And I could not even explain to the teacher that it was not my fault ! For while crawling on my sheet the fly had dried a little, and had ... flown off !(No, not on the teacher thank God !) But al least I was not called "the messiest boy in the school" ! :-)

No, I don't think the writer was messy on purpose. It was an extract from a Census document.

***

Magnumbellum,

Yes, I understand.

And in my case (problem) it was not the interviewer who filled in the document, but the head of the household. I wonder if he was the messiest man in town ! Besides, in 1901 he wrote that his wife could "read and rite (sic)", but then 10 years later she apparently had lost that capacity ! And also : arithmetic was not his strong point either. For his wife had suddenly grown 5 years younger. (But now that I come to think of it : seeing your wife grow 5 years younger is not exactly what I would call a ... "weak" point ! :-)

***

Of course I am hoping that someone would anticipate my question "What was written in line 2 and 3 before the crossing out took place ?" But I'd better be patient ... :-)))

But now : off to Europeana and "handwritten" !

Aurel

[seaJane]

Since we are on an inkwell tangent - my grandmother (born 1909) used to get into trouble with her mother because of ink on her pinafore (the days of white linen pinafores fore and aft, with big shoulder frills). Of course it wasn't my grandmother's fault - the boy at the desk behind dipped the end of her plait (braid) in his inkwell.

[seaJane]

PS I think line 2 was first 14 / - and then 35 / 8

[Aurel Sercu]

SeaJane,

Flemish boys did NOT do that !

Because ... there were no girls in our classrooms ! :-(

Aurel

PS About the digits. You are probably right about the 14. The Head of the family first may have confounded between Kate his wife, and Kate his daughter.

But I think first he wrote 14 / 8 and then 35.

Thanks.

[Ron Clifton]

As an aside, I have always drawn an 8 from top right to top left, then bottom right, then bottom left and back to top right. My father drew his in exactly the opposite direction.

Ron

[Dragon]

Was he the same handedness as you are? Or was he a natural left hander who was made to write with his right? I can write with both hands and if I am using my right hand I make my 8 in the way you do, and if I am using my left, I do it in mirror - as you describe your father's technique.

Come to think of it, the style of writing of some people taught much earlier in the 20th century may have been influenced by being forced to use the right hand when the left hand was the natural hand to use. (Plus the problems of using wet ink when writing from left to right with the left hand, as I mentioned before.) Being made to use/ steered towards using the unnatural hand leads to some awful contortions. (You shouldn't see my sewing, which is appalling. And my painting was atrocious until I tried using my left hand as an adult.)

Gwyn

[Ron Clifton]

Hello Gwyn

He was right handed, as I am. What I was trying to describe was not the mirror of my way, but the same track in the reverse direction, i.e. he started with a down stroke and ended with a curve across the top.

Ron

[Aurel Sercu]

Ron,

Your father was a wise man. He did it the way we do (did) it here (in Flanders).

And I am not saying that you .... :-)

Aurel

[auchonvillerssomme]

What I find interesting is the crossing of the 7's. I'm 55 and was told to do this at day release in technical college from 1976.

[seaJane]

Wrong war, I think, but I'm sure one of the central characters in a Nevil Shute book snaps at a Scandinavian crew member (aircraft?) for crossing his 7s...

[green_acorn]

Aurel,

You should look at the Arabic origin of the numerals, a zero has no angles, your version of a one/1 which has one angle, a closed four/4 has four angles, the "continental" version of the seven/7 with the cross stroke, has seven angles and so on. I am told that for many years the 7 with a cross stroke was mandatory in mathematics and computing in much of the English speaking world.

Cheers,

Hendo

[moggs]

Aurel,

You should look at the Arabic origin of the numerals, a zero has no angles, your version of a one/1 which has one angle, a closed four/4 has four angles, the "continental" version of the seven/7 with the cross stroke, has seven angles and so on. I am told that for many years the 7 with a cross stroke was mandatory in mathematics and computing in much of the English speaking world.

Cheers,

Hendo

Spot on Hendo. It's the angles within the shapes which are counted for the number. It's a brilliant concept.

Be that as it may, I grew up (as did many others I notice) without crossing the 7 and leaving the 1 without a stroke.

Jonathan

[Rockdoc]

One of the problems reading WW1 handwriting is that we forget, these days, how vital a 'good' hand was in many jobs. Teaching children to write was considered vital and pupils would have spent many hours replicating letters and numerals from the blackboard. Handwriting had to be clear in those days because nibbed pens, especially dip pens, were very unforgiving and if a looped character were written too small it was common, in my experience, for the ink to flood into the loop. For a clerk, blots and smudges might easily mean the loss of a job, after all, so the humblest would have tried to write well. When I went to college I found that I scribbled with a biro because I was writing so fast and my writing was difficult for me to read, never mind anyone else. I started to use a fountain pen and writing that little bit slower and a little bit larger made all the difference. The implement definitely influences the writing on the page.

Many characters of the WW1 era are more florid than we would write today. In my own researches I had problems with one War Diary because the FX I kept seeing made no sense until I realised that the X was actually a very florid H with loops at the top and bottom of both verticals and a strongly-sloping bar. FH then made sense as a contraction for French Headquarters.

To get back on topic, my grandfather, born in the 1880s, put a hook on his ones and wrote a closed four. In the mid-fifties, I was taught to write a one as a single stroke, with a hook as a permitted but discouraged alternative, and an open four. I did not cross a seven or a nought until I was writing computer programs in a college course about 1972 when, as others have said, the risk of confusion outweighs other considerations. Today I write an open and closed four interchangeably.

Keith

[Dragon]

As regards the closed 4,I think this has its origin in engineering drawing....thus engineers tend to use 4

Coincidentally I've just been going through my father's diaries. Born 1920, he was a mechanical engineer and his 4s are indeed inclined Gothic closed 4. As he died too young, I had forgotten that.

By the time my husband graduated as a civil engineer, any letter formation was acceptable. He wasn't expected to do freehand drawings and lettering once he reached the world of work. He says he was never advised to use a crossed 7 for engineering drawings - if an engineer did that it was from choice. Crossing letters only arose when writing coding sheets: some people advised crossing 7s but the main emphasis was on crossing 0s (zero).

I have quite a few books on calligraphy and fonts because I did a course some years ago and am interested in handwriting. So far, I can't find any examples of 19c / early 20c British writers being advised to use a crossed 7.

Gwyn

[Muerrisch]

Aurel,

You should look at the Arabic origin of the numerals, a zero has no angles, your version of a one/1 which has one angle, a closed four/4 has four angles, the "continental" version of the seven/7 with the cross stroke, has seven angles and so on. I am told that for many years the 7 with a cross stroke was mandatory in mathematics and computing in much of the English speaking world.

Cheers,

Hendo

I don't understand. My closed 4 has 5 angles, and my crossed 7 has 5 also.

[David Filsell]

There are number of boys in the class whose writing is simply unacceptable. I will nAme no names. They know who they are. I would like to see them in my room at break time.

[green_acorn]

I don't understand. My closed 4 has 5 angles, and my crossed 7 has 5 also.

I stand corrected , my angles etymology is wrong according to Wikipedia, though the origin is Hindu/Arabic. I blame my mathematics teachers.

Cheers,

Hendo

[Frank_East]

Revisiting my copy of A First Year in Engineering Drawing by Parkinson first published 1933,the following observations are made related to Engineering Drawing Office Practice. BS had an attempt to standardise in 1927 with BS 308 then during the war in 1943 there was a further attempt through a revised BS 308 1943, framed by the Admiralty,War Office,Board of Education,Imperial College of Science and Technology,British Engineers' Association and other Engineering Institutions.No doubt there has been further revisions of the practice since then.

Engineering Drawing Office Practice outlined the various lettering in use........plain broad letters and figures facilitate rapid reading and prevent costly errors

Old Roman...used largely by artists and architects but never in engineering drawing.

Modern Roman.......used by some engineering draughtsmen for large titles. If students endeavour to obtain proficiency in this, they should note that an airy grace is its principal characteristic and that excessively thick lines ruin it.

Commercial Gothic......appeals to most practical men on account of its solid legibility.It is usually employed for titles on large drawings.In the larger sizes...wholly pleasing at least to the "mechanical eye". From my experience,this is the lettering system in use for British engineering drawings.

All have closed 4s.The continental convention of a crossed 7 was never a feature of British engineering drawings,calculations and invoices etc.The use of the continental crossed 7 during the war raised the suspicion of an alien....possibly a German one.

[rolt968]

I tracked down my palaeography book as I wanted to check a couple of things. As it happens there were only a few examples of digits since lawyers and clerks in the past were paid by the number of word in documents and wrote as much as possible in longhand!

I was taught to write what I think was called "copperplate" in the 1950s. Looking at the writing books of the time, it was a style which seems to have been taught in schools for many years.

I abandoned most of its upper case letters and some of the digits in favour of something simpler and also as some characters were ambiguous, in the middle years of secondary school.

One of the characters I abandoned was the "wavy" topped seven which was much too like the upper case T and F both of which also had a "wavy" top. The seven was not crossed. A crossed seven would have been very easy to confuse with an upper case F.

I cannot remember what form of 1 I was originally taught. I think it was a single stroke inclined slightly to the right. I was certainly taught a looped and straight stroke 9 - loop first then the straight stroke. I may also have been taught a flat topped three.

I looked up the long up stroked 1 in the palaeography book. It was certainly used in British documents sometimes with an up "tail" from the bottom of the digit but both seem to have become less pronounced.

RM

[keithfazzani]

I cross my 7's, have no idea why and also "close" my 4's. Someone must have told me to do it at sometime. I am of the older generation if that helps.

[seaJane]

I was taught in (1960s) primary school to use the round-topped 3 rather than the flat-topped Ʒ to avoid possible confusion with 5. The result is that I can occasionally not tell whether I wrote 3 or 8 ....