[JadeNB]

> Personally, when handwriting, I got in the habit of striking a hyphen through the number "7" to disambuate against a possible number "1". Likewise, I'd strike through the letter "Z" to disambiguate from the number "2", and a diagonal strike through the number "0" to differentiate from the letter "O".

My handwriting also makes it hard to distinguish q from 9 in a situation where the baseline isn't clear.

I like and use your solutions, but the problem is that, if the reader doesn't know about them and doesn't have the other candidates to compare, a '1', a '2', or an 'O' has no visible mark to indicate that it's not a '7', a 'Z', or an '0'—that is, they are identified by missing, not additional, information. (I don't know any good solution, though.)

[hermitdev]

Surprisingly, in my experience, most people pick up on it with no explanation. Ive only had to explain it to a handful of people and to each, once. My handwriting is awful and has only gotten worse due to nuerigical issues. I look at my writing from my college notebooks versus current, and comparatively, my college writing is legible and I'm now producing chicken scratch that only I can decipher.

[JadeNB]

Sure! I agree that, if I saw your O side-by-side-with your 0, or even your 0 by itself, I would instantly understand. My point is just that, if I saw your O by itself and hadn't seen any of your handwriting before, I wouldn't know "aha, this is an O because it doesn't have a distinguishing mark", since I wouldn't know that your 0 does have a distinguishing mark.