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0 A dictionary containing a natural history requires too many hands, as well as too much time, ever to be hoped for. -- Locke. 0 \ 0\ adj. 1. indicating the absence of any or all units under consideration; -- representing the number zero as an Arabic numeral. Syn: zero [ WordNet 1. 5 PJC] 0 adj 1: indicating the absence of any or all units under consideration; " a zero score" [ synonym: { zero}, { 0}] n 1: a mathematical element that when added to another number yields the same number [ synonym: { zero}, { 0}, { nought}, { cipher}, { cypher}] { zero} 0 Numeric zero, as opposed to the letter ‘ O’ ( the 15th letter of the English alphabet). In their unmodified forms they look a lot alike, and various kluges invented to make them visually distinct have compounded the confusion. If your zero is center- dotted and letter- O is not, or if letter- O looks almost rectangular but zero looks more like an American football stood on end ( or the reverse), you' re probably looking at a modern character display ( though the dotted zero seems to have originated as an option on IBM 3270 controllers). If your zero is slashed but letter- O is not, you' re probably looking at an old- style ASCII graphic set descended from the default typewheel on the venerable ASR- 33 Teletype ( Scandinavians, for whom Ø is a letter, curse this arrangement). ( Interestingly, the slashed zero long predates computers; Florian Cajori' s monumental A History of Mathematical Notations notes that it was used in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.) If letter- O has a slash across it and the zero does not, your display is tuned for a very old convention used at IBM and a few other early mainframe makers ( Scandinavians curse this arrangement even more, because it means two of their letters collide). Some Burroughs/ Unisys equipment displays a zero with a reversed slash. Old CDC computers rendered letter O as an unbroken oval and 0 as an oval broken at upper right and lower left. And yet another convention common on early line printers left zero unornamented but added a tail or hook to the letter- O so that it resembled an inverted Q or cursive capital letter- O ( this was endorsed by a draft ANSI standard for how to draw ASCII characters, but the final standard changed the distinguisher to a tick- mark in the upper- left corner). Are we sufficiently confused yet?
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