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I'm seeing that Oh-for-zero gimmick around lately... I know it's an old trick to replace ones and zeros with I/l and O/o (and vice versa) in passwords and such, but it really bothers me seeing it in actual typography, especially when there's an obvious mismatch (like the height variance in that example).

Do type designers now have to add a StupidTrend stlystic set? :-)

hhp

Actually, what you describe is an old trend, one particular adaptation necessitated by the limited number of keys available on a standard clankety-clank typewriter keyboard…

Ah, good point. In fact (some) Armenian typewriters replaced three numbers with letters: Ձ, Յ and Օ. And that's where my "Arasan" layout* (used in Windows and OSX... still waiting for official credit) got the idea!

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_alphabet#Arasan-compatible

hhp

The “double duty” figures that are designed to work with both U&lc and all caps can be a little weak (narrow, especially, but also light) in all cap settings. So if a font doesn’t have special all cap lining figures (as Shinntype OpenType fonts do), this a good design solution. Here’s another example:

I remember seeing, in the book "Century of the Typewriter", some of the Armenian typewriter layouts to which you refer.

But Nick, a zero almost always has another numeral next to it, so...

hhp

Yes, the 3 in 30ROCK does look a bit narrow, especially to my typographically attuned eyes (which noticed and remembered this in the first place). But overall the substitution does even things out between figures and letters, enough to work for the lay eye, IMHO. Nobody’s going to read it “3 o’rock”! (The color change nails it.)

Well, in that example the symmetry with the "O" in "ROCK" makes it click I think (and "oro" means gold in Spanish :-) but I've seen things like "2012" just by itself with an Oh instead of a zero!

hhp

Actually, what you describe is an old trend, one particular adaptation necessitated by the limited number of keys available on a standard clankety-clank typewriter keyboard…

An old trend indeed. This is what the keyboard layout of Sholes & Glidden Type Writer (a.k.a. Remington No. 1, before 1878) looked like: 43 letters, all caps, no figures 0 and 1, no parentheses and brackets, no exclamation point. In the 1960s I remember using Cyrillic У for Latin V, and figure 1 for Roman numeral I: in Russian typography Roman numerals are used in denoting centuries, thusly: ХУ111–Х1Х вв. But all typewriters in Moscow had Russian keyboard layout! Before decimal (soft-dotted) i (І), yat (Ѣ), fita (Ѳ) and izhitsa (Ѵ) had been dropped in 1918 Russian typists used fita for the V and Cyrillic decimal i for the I: ХѴІІІ–ХІХ вв. That substitution was standard practice in typography too.

When Burmese typewriters came out, they conflated alphabetics with numerals to fit as many characters on as few keys as possible.

Here we have the little ga, numeral 8, curved ya and numeral 7. The two numerals were represented by these letters with similar forms, though the inner loop of the ya was removed, as is sometimes done in handwriting.

Not what you're talking about, I'd imagine, but a number of us replace any "Stempel" zeros (has opposite stress) with a modified "o".

I used to grin & bear those zeros, but Richard Eckersley was having none of it, & we always swapped such zeros out for his books. Harder in the photocomp days, when you had to find another font that matched. Today, we just, gasp, modify the published font.

Anyone who thinks those zeros are cool would steal warm fuzzy things.

Not what you’re talking about, I’d imagine, but a number of us replace any “Stempel” zeros (has opposite stress) with a modified “o”.

I vaguely remember that in his typographic style rules he wrote for Young & Rubicam Klaus Schmidt insisted that in all display copy set in Franklin Gothic the lower-case l should be used in lieu of figure 1.

I do it frequently (O by 0) when I write the current year in a big poster or something like that. It makes the year look maginificent.

Am I misremembering or didn't the OpenType 'consortium' publish a new feature, 'l33t', at the beginning of the month to deal with just this?