Monday 12 May 2008, 10:04 PM

1 or l?

Posted by Jake Rayson

Meanwhile, back at The Ministry of Secrets, I had an interesting discussion with a co-worker about shortcuts. It arose from the fact that I’m not allowed to install fonts, and the default monospace font is Courier New. I’m not a big fan really, as it’s a bit squidgy and rounded, and, horror of horrors, the 1 looks identical to an l. This is not a good idea if you’re typing lots of code which has numbers in (and most of mine does).

PeterD pointed out that back in the days of golfball typewriter, typists used to use l rather than 1 because of this identicality and because the key is quicker to reach. No problem until the whole department he was working in was computerised, and a generation of workers had to abandon their old trick habits.

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