A common mistake, or question, is when is the character ‘O’ actually an O, and when is it a zero?
It is really important to be able to distinguish between the numerical ‘0’ and the letter ‘O’. Those who aren’t familiar with this concept get confused by it.
The difference between the three
Helpfully there is an easy way to tell the difference between the two (see right for examples):
- A zero is tall and thin looking, sometimes with a slash going through it
- An uppercase ‘O’ is wider, fatter, rounder, and with no strike
- A lowercase ‘o’ is still just as round as the uppercase, but sits shorter on a line of text
When you’re reciting your credit card number for example, it is normal to pronounce the zero as n “O”. But other types of codes have different combinations of both letters and numbers.
For example, a UK postcode is structured in either two ways:
- Two letters, two numbers, a third number and then two letters again. e.g. YO10 0AA
- In London, some postcodes are structured with one letter, two numbers and then two letters again. e.g. W1 0AA
Why is this important, you’re probably asking? Because all too often users when registering on a website that requires a postcode, get rejected because their postcode is not get recognised because they have put in an ‘O’ instead of a ‘0’, or visa-versa.
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