Date:  Thu, 30 Nov 1995 13:39:58 -0500

From:  Ronald Butters <amspeech[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ACPUB.DUKE.EDU>

Subject: Re: Zero or "o"?



On Mon, 27 Nov 1995, Larry Horn wrote:



> Of course the Operator position was originally keyed to O because the latter

> was referred to as "oh", or so I assume. Anyway, the one position we NEVER get

> 'zero' is in referring to years like 1903--yet there's no possibility of

> analyzing that as '19-operator-3'. I have a feeling the full range of labels

> is complicated and pretty interesting. In sports scores, for instance, the

> losing score is "nothing" (never "oh" and rarely "zero") if it's baseball or

> football, "nil" if it's soccer, and "love" if it's tennis. Otherwise, 0 is

> usually "oh" for reasons of least effort in house addresses, dates, etc., but

> as Marla points out this may change in computer addresses, as it already has

> to some extent in other contexts where the value of a particular alphanumeric

> symbol is otherwise unrecoverable (as between letter "O" and number "0") and

> where the distinction matters--license plates, vehicle IDs,...



Let me further complicate the matter: my grandfather (and other Iowans of

his generation--and maybe my father as well [b. 1912]) said "nineteen

aught three" for 1903. "Aught" was pretty poplular, at least in Iowa, in

the earlier part of this century.