4 ms·

So you're reading a number and then -blurp- your mind goes "Danish" or "Norwegian" letter? Context doesn't come into play? I mean - I can understand such conf

by cr0sh 8y ago

So you're reading a number and then -blurp- your mind goes "Danish" or "Norwegian" letter? Context doesn't come into play? I mean - I can understand such confusion if you are dealing with some kind of multi-character random code or such (ie - a "confirmation code" for instance), and the site is primarily targeted to Danish or Norwegian users; in that case, the confusion would be valid. Much like such codes in "English" (maybe "Latin" might be a better description?), without having a distinguishing mark for the zero, and depending on the font used - where a zero can look like a capital letter "O". Was that "0" or "O"? That can be an issue, depending on the language of the users, etc. But aside from those particular cases, which aren't very frequent, most of the time you can infer what is meant by what, based on the context of the surrounding characters and the information that is likely being conveyed. I'm not sure one should get too upset by such a minor thing...?

pmarreck 8y ago
I would imagine that if you speak a language that includes that letter, it would be much more annoying
interactivecode 8y ago
it's about as annoying as finding the difference between a o or 0. it's about cognitive load
hnarn 8y ago
> So you're reading a number and then -blurp- your mind goes "Danish" or "Norwegian" letter? Yes, because my native language is Swedish, so I frequently come across this letter. > Context doesn't come into play? Would you use this argument against someone that said zero and the letter O are too similar? I doubt it, and I suspect your casual approach to this is based on the fact that you never encounter this letter.
red_admiral 8y ago
> So you're reading a number and then -blurp- your mind goes "Danish" or "Norwegian" letter? Yes. Once you become really fluent in a different script, I find that misuse of it starts to become really annoying. Before I had any proficiency in a language using the Cyrillic alphabet, if someone replaced say an A with a De (Д) or a W with a Sha (Ш) in an English text, I'd have no trouble reading it. Now, this kind of thing always trips me up and I've heard from several native speakers that they absolutely hate this kind of thing. To the people doing this to lyrics of metal songs in particular: please stop. If I had to have a guess at why, I'd say if you are fluent in English but not a Cyrillic language, then your "System 1" autocorrects such mistakes to the the closest English word without you noticing. Once the other letters start to mean something, you consciously notice the mistakes as such. (For an example of the mental "autocorrect", did you notice the repeated "the" above? h/t Scott Alexander.) Same idea with that game where you have words written in different colours but you have to read the colour instead of the word, so if "blue" is written in green you have to read "green". It's incredibly annoying in a language that you know, but really easy in a script/language that you don't know.
- amyjess 8y ago
  Or for that matter, Greek. It absolutely drives me up the wall when I see uppercase lambdas used for A. For example, the car company Kia styles their name KIΛ, which makes me think "Kil". Or the monitor company AOC writing it ΛOC. And recently I've been watching an anime called Aldnoah.Zero, which stylizes its name as ΛLDNOΛH.ZERO. That one is particularly aggravating because the lambda is right next to an L!
  - Asooka 8y ago
    ΛOC is the worst for me in Cyrillic, because that is a real word and it means elk.
talltimtom 8y ago
True, 1 d0nt get h0w anyone c0uld f1nd that an0ying 1n a font, when c0ntext make5 it readily apparent that they are letters.
ulrikrasmussen 8y ago
Naive Danish speaker here. It is really jarring to look at, and is completely indistinguishable from ø. It is not that I cannot infer its meaning from the context, but it just stands out as a typo on first look and is really distracting. It surely would prevent me from using the font.
- kazinator 8y ago
  Good thing Danish doesn't have A through F, or you wouldn't be able to stomach hexadecimal.] Likewise with O; the commonplace zero with no slash would likely look like a jarring typo also, if Danish had that letter.
  - ulrikrasmussen 8y ago
    Not the same thing; A-F are expected in hexadecimal and thus don't look out of place. I don't understand what you mean with O, font designers usually make sure that there are visual cues specifically to make it easy to distinguish those two glyphs.
  - _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
    > Good thing Danish doesn't have A through F, or you wouldn't be able to stomach hexadecimal.] Hexadecimal requires being able to identify 'A', 'B' etc. as 'A', 'B' etc. It happens that they're assigned a different value/function then for their alphabetic use. The point is that there isn't another numerical symbol that is easily confusable with 'A'. (Of course there's l33t '4', but the two symbols are pretty distinct in most typefaces.) tldr; Being able to be used to represent a numeric value isn't the same thing as being easily confused for a different symbol, with a different value that also represents a numeric value.
    - kazinator 8y ago
      I don't agree; hexadecimal requires being able to identify A as the tenth element of the sequence of the natural numbers. Normally, the numeric symbolism that is attached to A is the concept of primality, firstness, not tenth-ness. Consider: "Grade A", "A-1 Contracting Co.", "Type 'A' personality", "AAA stock"... A is not just being the usual A in hexadecimal.

by cr0sh 8y ago

pmarreck 8y ago

I would imagine that if you speak a language that includes that letter, it would be much more annoying

interactivecode 8y ago

it's about as annoying as finding the difference between a o or 0. it's about cognitive load

hnarn 8y ago

> So you're reading a number and then -blurp- your mind goes "Danish" or "Norwegian" letter? Yes, because my native language is Swedish, so I frequently come across this letter. > Context doesn't come into play? Would you use this argument against someone that said zero and the letter O are too similar? I doubt it, and I suspect your casual approach to this is based on the fact that you never encounter this letter.

red_admiral 8y ago

> So you're reading a number and then -blurp- your mind goes "Danish" or "Norwegian" letter? Yes. Once you become really fluent in a different script, I find that misuse of it starts to become really annoying. Before I had any proficiency in a language using the Cyrillic alphabet, if someone replaced say an A with a De (Д) or a W with a Sha (Ш) in an English text, I'd have no trouble reading it. Now, this kind of thing always trips me up and I've heard from several native speakers that they absolutely hate this kind of thing. To the people doing this to lyrics of metal songs in particular: please stop. If I had to have a guess at why, I'd say if you are fluent in English but not a Cyrillic language, then your "System 1" autocorrects such mistakes to the the closest English word without you noticing. Once the other letters start to mean something, you consciously notice the mistakes as such. (For an example of the mental "autocorrect", did you notice the repeated "the" above? h/t Scott Alexander.) Same idea with that game where you have words written in different colours but you have to read the colour instead of the word, so if "blue" is written in green you have to read "green". It's incredibly annoying in a language that you know, but really easy in a script/language that you don't know.

amyjess 8y ago
Or for that matter, Greek. It absolutely drives me up the wall when I see uppercase lambdas used for A. For example, the car company Kia styles their name KIΛ, which makes me think "Kil". Or the monitor company AOC writing it ΛOC. And recently I've been watching an anime called Aldnoah.Zero, which stylizes its name as ΛLDNOΛH.ZERO. That one is particularly aggravating because the lambda is right next to an L!
- Asooka 8y ago
  ΛOC is the worst for me in Cyrillic, because that is a real word and it means elk.

talltimtom 8y ago

True, 1 d0nt get h0w anyone c0uld f1nd that an0ying 1n a font, when c0ntext make5 it readily apparent that they are letters.

ulrikrasmussen 8y ago

Naive Danish speaker here. It is really jarring to look at, and is completely indistinguishable from ø. It is not that I cannot infer its meaning from the context, but it just stands out as a typo on first look and is really distracting. It surely would prevent me from using the font.

kazinator 8y ago
Good thing Danish doesn't have A through F, or you wouldn't be able to stomach hexadecimal.] Likewise with O; the commonplace zero with no slash would likely look like a jarring typo also, if Danish had that letter.
- ulrikrasmussen 8y ago
  Not the same thing; A-F are expected in hexadecimal and thus don't look out of place. I don't understand what you mean with O, font designers usually make sure that there are visual cues specifically to make it easy to distinguish those two glyphs.
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  > Good thing Danish doesn't have A through F, or you wouldn't be able to stomach hexadecimal.] Hexadecimal requires being able to identify 'A', 'B' etc. as 'A', 'B' etc. It happens that they're assigned a different value/function then for their alphabetic use. The point is that there isn't another numerical symbol that is easily confusable with 'A'. (Of course there's l33t '4', but the two symbols are pretty distinct in most typefaces.) tldr; Being able to be used to represent a numeric value isn't the same thing as being easily confused for a different symbol, with a different value that also represents a numeric value.
  - kazinator 8y ago
    I don't agree; hexadecimal requires being able to identify A as the tenth element of the sequence of the natural numbers. Normally, the numeric symbolism that is attached to A is the concept of primality, firstness, not tenth-ness. Consider: "Grade A", "A-1 Contracting Co.", "Type 'A' personality", "AAA stock"... A is not just being the usual A in hexadecimal.