Do you slash your lowercase q's? How common or rare is it?

Very uncommon. Sometimes people with slash zero and 7, but they aren't super common. I've never seen anyone slash Q. I actually didn't know that was a thing.

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PrimaryHighlight5617@reddit

I feel like with seats a little more common to note that it's an uppercase

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wounds-of-light@reddit

I slash my 0s 7s and qs. I just be slashin

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AlmiranteCrujido@reddit

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/eOw0cc6A15g

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MuppetManiac@reddit

I had a math teacher who taught us to slash our 7s so you could differentiate them from a 1 because apparently some of us had horrible penmanship. I’ve never seen a handwritten Q with a slash.

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Some people “hook” their 7s/1s and even sometimes Zs which is probably why they’d want you to slash, even if you weren’t the cause in particular. I’ve never seen someone both hook and slash a Z, my name starts with a Z so I’ve seen every version there is.

I have never seen someone slash a q.

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Inside-Run785@reddit

It’s more because some people put the little top on the one.

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Imaginary_Ladder_917@reddit

Definitely some cultures do this. As a teacher I saw this occasionally with immigrant teenagers. In that case the 7 hash is helpful

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B_A_Beder@reddit

I started slashing my Z's in math once we started 3D vectors and 3D calculus because my Z's always looked like 2's

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Linzabee@reddit

Same

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This-Professional-39@reddit

Yup. 7, Z and 0. For pretty much same reason

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El_Polio_Loco@reddit

Yup, same thing that forced me to start putting the slash in my Z

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shelwood46@reddit

Per the link provided, it's only used in Romance languages and isn't the same as a Q without a slash, it's more like an &? But I have also never seen it.

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CrazyCreeps9182@reddit

I was taught as a kid to slash my 7 at the upper left and, and later in college to slash my z when doing equations and stuff to avoid confusion with 2 and 7. Never seen a slashed q in handwriting but yeah in digital images.

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WildwoodShadow@reddit

I do 7s and Zs, even in text because I use the handwriting feature rather than the keyboard. Never heard about Qs, though.

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ezekiel920@reddit

I genuinely slash my 7s. Learned it from my step-dad. Everyone who sees it makes a comment about how weird it is.

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SeaLeopard5555@reddit

it's not weird at all to me. I slash my 0s, 7s, and Z. I started doing this in high school.

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CreepinJesusMalone@reddit

Slashing zeros is taught in the military to differentiate from the letter O in handwritten correspondence, notes, logs, etc. I still do it out of habit from my time in, and have had people notice and ask if I'm a vet. I also print my handwriting in all caps lol. Such a weird thing to never be able to shake, also something people see and ask.

The only time I recall seeing slashed sevens and Zs was in algebra, trig, calculus, etc. Basically any math that started getting taught around middle school.

There were a few kids that did just for math class and doing equations because it was easier to tell figures apart.

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SterileCarrot@reddit

I do it, started doing it a decade ago because I was sick of wondering whether I had written a 1 or a 7. My handwriting is generally very bad

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otbnmalta@reddit

I slash my 7s

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PrincipalSquareRoot@reddit (OP)

Write it with the foot and top serif too! https://share.google/cQk9SGSMsQavkVt65

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kjb76@reddit

I slash my 7s and Zs but I’ve never heard of doing it to a Q.

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Pylyp23@reddit

I slash 0 7 and Z and have never heard of slashing lower case q

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mac979s@reddit

i slash zeros . i always have !

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PrimaryHighlight5617@reddit

No I always write them with a bright angel tail at the end.

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epicenter69@reddit

I’ve seen a lowercase q written with a “checkmark” uptick going right at the bottom, but have never seen or heard of a slash.

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AlmiranteCrujido@reddit

That's how I I write my lowercase q - diagonal line up rather than a curl.

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StOnEy333@reddit

I never slash upper or lower case. And my last name starts with a Q.

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PlanningMyEscape@reddit

Never. I'd not heard about that before.

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AlmiranteCrujido@reddit

Me neither. For that matter, the extra line through a Z or 7 is a weird old fashioned thing I've only seen in historical stuff, not in live writing even of my parents' generation and they were born in the 1940s.

Dotting or slashing zeros is a computer print thing, to differentiate them from O/o - the font Reddit shows up in when you use the markdown editor still uses it for 0 - I do it on rare occasions like if I have to write a password down by hand, but not in typical handwriting where despite having shit handwriting where 0 and O look the same, it will be obvious from context.

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shelwood46@reddit

Same, I couldn't even picture it till I clicked the wiki link. We were definitely never taught that.

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wieldymouse@reddit

Me either.

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GuzzyRawks@reddit

I’ve done it in college for civil engineering. Sometimes “q” can represent certain variables, and the slash distinguishes it from a 9

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Nursebirder@reddit

I actually do, but it’s really uncommon. I also cross my 7s and Zs.

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Adorable_Dust3799@reddit

I slash 7s 1s and 0s sporadically, have seen Z, never seen Q

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OG-BigMilky@reddit

I only slash 0s.

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Agamenticus72@reddit

I have never seen this before .

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Imaginary_Ladder_917@reddit

No

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markuus99@reddit

On the Wikipedia page it says this was used in the Middle Ages. Not used in the modern day

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Loisgrand6@reddit

Never seen that

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Ifyougivearagamuffin@reddit

never even seen that one! I do my 7s, Zs and 0s, though

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katfromjersey@reddit

As far as I know, this isn't a thing here. I've never seen it.

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wounds-of-light@reddit

I do it, but I’m also the only person I know who does it

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panTrektual@reddit

I do it too, but I also don't know anyone else that does it.

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tiggipi@reddit

I'm curious, why did you start slashing your qs if no one else you know does it?

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wounds-of-light@reddit

My high school English teacher did it, and I liked it so I started doing it too

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BouncingSphinx@reddit

0 and 7 isn't uncommon to help distinguish that they're different from O and 1 usually. A z is less common, but suppose to help distinguish from a 2. Never heard of Q or q. The tail on Q is already distinguishing from O or 0, and the only other option for q is maybe g.

Even in cursive, all the letters are different for exactly the same reason, at least how I learned them. Lowercase h and k are similar, as are u and w, but they have differences.

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cropguru357@reddit

I’ve never seen this ever until today.

I slash 7 and Z, though.

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machagogo@reddit

No. I do slash my sevens and z' though.

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FormerlyDK@reddit

No. Never saw that before either.

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IsThisDecent@reddit

I do the slash through the 7 and the z and the zero because it looks cool.

Never seen it through the q

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thatlukeguy@reddit

Never even heard of it ever.

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Non-Eutactic_Solid@reddit

I usually slash my 0s, 7s, and sometimes my Zs depending on what I’m doing. Lower-case Qs I’ve never slashed, but I do put a “tail” on it instead.

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tiggipi@reddit

I occasionally slash my 0s, for example if I'm writing down a password and I don't want to get my Os and my 0s mixed up. I've never heard of anyone slashing their qs.

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Pernicious_Possum@reddit

I have never seen this

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NIN10DOXD@reddit

No, but I wouldn’t mind seeing some older letters and their styles return. I like æ,ð,ß,þ, etc.

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garretmander@reddit

In college I trained myself to slash z & 7, plus put the serif curl on my lower caste t. Never saw a reason to do q, but I did an up turned tail to the right from the bottom of my q's.

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PrincipalSquareRoot@reddit (OP)

Interesting, maybe people do it nowdays to avoid confusion with 9 since we don't usually write q with the tail

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InvestigatorJaded261@reddit

Who is “we”?

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PrincipalSquareRoot@reddit (OP)

People here in Spain and maybe nearby countries

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InvestigatorJaded261@reddit

Is the tail the same as the cross?

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PrincipalSquareRoot@reddit (OP)

No

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InvestigatorJaded261@reddit

A tail seems normal. In English it’s how we distinguish lowercase q from lowercase g.

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hugothebear@reddit

Q is a more commonly used letter in spanish than it is in English. I was just taught uppercase Q looked like a 2

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nolemandan@reddit

I do and I'm surprised at the amount of people saying they've never seen it before. However, my family is from Cuba and I grew up in Miami, so maybe that is why I felt it was more common than it actually is in the US.

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ParadoxicalFrog@reddit

I've never seen or heard of that. I just give them a little hook at the bottom.

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skucera@reddit

I slash all of my 7s and Zs, but I have NEVER seen a slashed q. I would think that’s some sort of foreign diacritic mark.

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PrincipalSquareRoot@reddit (OP)

Wikipedia says it used to stand in to abbreviate some words long ago, kinda like we do today (w/, &, etc.)

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InvestigatorJaded261@reddit

Like an ampersand? That’s cool, but that’s not the letter q, just like an ampersand isn’t the letter E.

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PrincipalSquareRoot@reddit (OP)

I meant that it was used to abreviate a few select short words that started with Q in Latin.

Also, the ampersand is actually "Et", which is "and" in Latin

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InvestigatorJaded261@reddit

I realize. But that doesn’t make it a letter, any more than q with a cross.

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InvestigatorJaded261@reddit

So having looked at the Wikipedia article, it’s clear that Q with a stroke is not a way of writing the letter Q in any language (unlike a cross stroke on Z or 7, or a diagonal slash on zero). It’s an abbreviation, like an ampersand or a G-clef, that serves slightly different purposes in various Romance languages for words descended from qui, quae, quod, especially quam.

If there is a language where a cross stroke is normal part of writing a phonetic Q, the article doesn’t mention it.

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PrincipalSquareRoot@reddit (OP)

Weird, the font I was taught did have the slash https://share.google/0CK8OxEhdWgzolsxw

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InvestigatorJaded261@reddit

Most Fonts have lots of things that aren’t actually letters: numbers, punctuation, ampersands, %, $, @, * and so forth.

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ThePenguinMan111@reddit

I slash my 7s, Zs, and zeros (looks like ø, kinda). Never heard of the Qs though

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Adventurous-Chef8776@reddit

I do it with a 7 and when I write print I cross the Z. But when I write by hand it's usually cursive.

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PrincipalSquareRoot@reddit (OP)

The font they taught at my specific school also slashes the cursive lowercase z 🤣 https://share.google/0CK8OxEhdWgzolsxw

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Adventurous-Chef8776@reddit

This is our cursive alphabet.

We make our cursive Z different.

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AnInfiniteArc@reddit

No. Ƶ is an accepted allographic variant of Z in English, and 7/0 are the same.

Q with stroke is not an accepted variant of Q in any existing alphabet as far as I can find. I don’t believe that the Spanish cursive variant you are describing (which may be sometimes used in other languages like French) actually constitutes a Q with stroke.

I cross my Z and 7, but not 0 unless it’s part of a mixed alphanumeric sequence.

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Chee-shep@reddit

I’d actually never heard of it before.

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ZonaWildcats23@reddit

No. I do my 7’s tho

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PuzzledKumquat@reddit

I do on my zeros and Z, since those can be mistaken for O and 2, but never heard about it being done for Q.

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SteampunkRobin@reddit

Never seen that. I slash my Zs and used to slash my 7s though.

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CharlesFXD@reddit

I’ve not seen Q’s slashed like that before but I slash my Z’s and zeros.

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HermioneMarch@reddit

Never seen that

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nchemungguy@reddit

I’ve never seen that before.

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BippidiBoppetyBoob@reddit

I’ve never done it.

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donuttrackme@reddit

Nope, never done it with Qs. I always slash 7s and Zs sometimes too. Very rarely 0 (the number zero) I'll slash too if the sentence I'm writing would be confusing otherwise.

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diegotbn@reddit

I do, but I only started doing it in college since it was the convention in Spanish and I was a Spanish major. Never really stopped because I like it.

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wyvern713@reddit

Never heard of it for Qs. I've seen 0s and 7s slashed, and will occasionally do so myself, but never a Q.

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BAMspek@reddit

I have never seen that done in my entire life.

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TankDestroyerSarg@reddit

Never have. I do add the cross on my 7s and Zs. I got into the habit when learning German, and was taught that was the German/Continental way of writing them.

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mychampagnesphincter@reddit

I slash my 7’s and sometimes my zeroes but only bc I lived abroad for a bit. No one here does it in the reg

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theoldman-1313@reddit

I had never seen a "Q" with a slash until your post. I did learn the slashed 0 and 7 as an adult from reading blue prints for European manufactured equipment. I also learned the yyyy-mm-dd date format there as well which I adopted for personal use.

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PrincipalSquareRoot@reddit (OP)

yyyy-mm-dd or dd-mm-yyyy?

Also, am I the only one who thinks that dd-MTH-yyyy is better? (Today would be 20/APR/2026)

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EulerIdentity@reddit

Never - and never heard of anyone doing that.

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Dave_A480@reddit

Can't think of the last time I wrote a q instead of typing it....

Pen and paper are kind of like cash - a little archaic....

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meeeeeeeehhhhhhhhh@reddit

I write with the slash only because I did a ton of math in college. Z, zero and 7 gets a slash and ones get a slash on top

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PrincipalSquareRoot@reddit (OP)

We're taught to write our 1s with the serif already so it looks like a fishing hook. Cool!

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Practical-Ordinary-6@reddit

I know when I was in Morocco in a French speaking area the way they wrote their ones was very unusual for my past experience. It's basically made up of two lines, one thing and one thick. An American 1 is basically one single line, possibly with a little hook at the top (and more formally a little line at the base but not very often in real everyday life). I wish I could include pictures here. Even so I had ahard time finding a decent picture.

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Practical-Ordinary-6@reddit

I did a lot of math in college and I still never slash anything. Honestly though the kind of math we did didn't involve too many actual numbers and so I probably wouldn't have been writing seven all that often.

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miketugboat@reddit

Looks eastern orthodox to me, i'm not sure I've ever seen that

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malachite_13@reddit

I write lowercase Q like that. But I learned it from my parents, and they learned how to write in a Latin American country.

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JoyfulNoise1964@reddit

Never even heard of that

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SnooPineapples280@reddit

I’ve never seen that done.

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Js987@reddit

I have never a slashed lowercase q by a modern English speaking writer, only in historical texts in like, Latin.

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InvestigatorJaded261@reddit

Never seen it there either, and I’ve seen a lot of Latin.

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Anteater_Reasonable@reddit

My name starts with Q and I’ve never done or even seen this before

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PrincipalSquareRoot@reddit (OP)

To be fair it's only ever done on lowercase q

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InvestigatorJaded261@reddit

By whom?

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PrincipalSquareRoot@reddit (OP)

I'm not sure how many people in Spain still do it. Maybe in some other countries that use the latin alphabet but I'm not sure

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FlattopJr@reddit

Thanks for your input, Qimothy.

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skucera@reddit

I’m getting some Phteven (“Stephen with a ‘ph’”) energy from this comment!

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_HeyGFY_@reddit

7, yes. Z, no. q, no.

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MitchyS68@reddit

Never seen that.

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sgtm7@reddit

No. Never heard of doing that. I can see slashing a zero, so it isn't confused with an O. I can even see slashing a 7, so it isn't confused with an 1. I can't think of a reason to do it with an upper or a lower case Q. The part you are slashing on the upper case is the part that identifies it as a Q anyway. The lowercase, shouldn't be confused with any other letter.

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Always_Reading_1990@reddit

Never even seen this before

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InvestigatorJaded261@reddit

Never have I ever seen this, in the US or abroad.

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Jacks_Lack_of_Sleep@reddit

I’ve never seen or heard of this. Had you just posted a picture of it without asking about lowercase Qs, I think my brain would have short circuited and not even recognized it as a lowercase Q.

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Outrageous-Proof4630@reddit

I’ve never see this and I had to handwriting class as part of my undergrad degree.

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StupidLemonEater@reddit

I usually slash my Zs and 7s but never my qs.

I usually write q with a back-facing v hook like this to avoid confusing it with 9.

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PrincipalSquareRoot@reddit (OP)

I've seen that before, is it common?

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JasminJaded@reddit

I’ve never seen that. I cross z and 7, but I haven’t encountered a situation where q needs to be crossed.

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Hopeful_Pizza_2762@reddit

When I was taking math courses I wrote nt 2's ans z's exactly the same. Like when you are working with x, y, z. So I would put a slash mark through my z's.

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Educational_Mess_998@reddit

Same. Z’s are still slashed and I will not be uninstalling this programming atp.

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TheBotchedLobotomy@reddit

Yep me either same with 7. Which i always thought was dumb until I started dating a German girl. They write their 1's very similar to how americans write 7 so that one just stuck

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Ratstar911@reddit

I worked at a bank and my 51 and 57 looked too much alike, so I slash 7s.

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VariegatedPlumage@reddit

I have never seen this in my life

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JustSteve1974@reddit

Zs 7s and zeros, never heard of Q but can see the usage similar to zeros

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Practical-Ordinary-6@reddit

I've never heard of that for q and we don't generally do it with numbers either.

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hyst808@reddit

I slash Z, z, 7 and 0 if it is unclear (like I am writing a password and need to be sure if it is a letter O or zero). I dont separately slash a q, but the tail is probably a vestigial slash or the slash is a poorly formed tail.

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BlackSwanMarmot@reddit

I slash Z’s and occasionally my 7’s. But I hardly write at all anymore. It’s all typing of one sort or another.

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w3woody@reddit

I always slash q. I never slash 7 or z, and I only slash 0 when writing code.

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PrincipalSquareRoot@reddit (OP)

What do you mean with 0, are you drafting your code on paper first?

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w3woody@reddit

When writing code on paper, which happens sometimes when I'm trying to reason through the math behind a particular bit of code I'm working out.

I rarely do this--but it does happen when solving hard problems.

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PrincipalSquareRoot@reddit (OP)

Do you do 9 as shown here or the common handwritten way?

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PhysicsEagle@reddit

If I’m doing math I always slash my Qs, Zs, and 7s. But in normal writing I don’t.

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Casehead@reddit

why does a Q require a slash?

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PhysicsEagle@reddit

If you do it sloppily it looks like a 9

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ThisDerpForSale@reddit

No. I slash my 7's and Z's, but not q's. I do use a version of the lower case cursive q though.

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qu33nof5pad35@reddit

No. It’s not common.

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nunyabizthewiz@reddit

I’ve never seen that before in my life

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Soldadera@reddit

I give my lowercase q’s a tail flip up, if that makes sense, like half of a tiny v

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LegendOfHurleysGold@reddit

Why would I dare so something so pointless

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PrincipalSquareRoot@reddit (OP)

Idk I guess it distinguishes it from 9

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Jazzvinyl59@reddit

Never seen it before in my life. I would assume it was a mathematical or scientific meaning unknown to me.

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PrincipalSquareRoot@reddit (OP)

Not really, apparently it's a history thing from what I saw on the article

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otbnmalta@reddit

No I've never. I'm 59

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shammy_dammy@reddit

No, never. I slash my 7's and my Z's. But even that is because I spent four years in the UK as a child.

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PrincipalSquareRoot@reddit (OP)

Do you write your ones like I or 1?

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shammy_dammy@reddit

1 with a bottom foot.

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TheDepressingReality@reddit

I slash my sevens, qs get a backwards curl, opposite of g.

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Casehead@reddit

isn't that just literally how a q is written?

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TheDepressingReality@reddit

Eh, some people do just straight line down, opposite of a lowercase p

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Deolater@reddit

Like everyone in this thread, my calculus class started me crossing my Z

I don't slash my q though

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Are_You_Knitting_Me@reddit

I do q, z, Z and 7. I feel like it’s maybe a European thing? Like maybe vaguely Russian? But I just liked how it looked when I was little for z, Z and 7.

For q, I started slashing it when I started a math class with variables p and q (is that stats?) for easier reading of my own handwriting.

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WanderFish01@reddit

Nope

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Rattlingplates@reddit

Never seen that or even heard about it. Seems dumb to me but what ever floats your boat

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Acceptable_Tea3608@reddit

Yeah that looks like a religious symbol. Not surprising considering it was often used in monasteries. And coming from Spain.

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willtag70@reddit

I don't and don't recall seeing it here. I just use a reverse bottom flip on the descender. Crossing 7 and 0 are also very uncommon, but I think with Z more common to distinguish from 2.

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emmathyst@reddit

I slash 7s and Zs (and 0s in a mixed-letter-number string) but never seen a slashed Q.

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0wnzorPwnz0r@reddit

Reading this post made me realize that when I write q's by hand, it's always capitalized. My mind is aware that the lower case q exists...but I guess it doesn't translate to my hand. 🤷🏽‍♂️

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Otherwise-OhWell@reddit

My penmanship has been declining for 30 years. Mostly because of keyboards but also declining eyesight. My "q" COULD have a slash through it but not necessarily because I wanted to put it there. I can still write a fancy lowercase "a" though.

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Ericakat@reddit

My mom was born in the 50’s and slashes a line through her sevens. She’s the only one I’ve seen ever do that.

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WhoWhaaaa@reddit

I only slash my 7s. I don't even remember where I picked it up. In high school or an accounting class, maybe?

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donner_dinner_party@reddit

I slash my 7’s so they don’t look like ones. But never a Q.

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Casehead@reddit

Never heard of this

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SubstanceNo1544@reddit

I slashing my 7s not the 0s and ive never seen the q thing

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Significant_Role4308@reddit

Have never seen it, but now I'm gonna start using it. I like it!

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PrincipalSquareRoot@reddit (OP)

Yay i'm remotely useful c:

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TrappedInHyperspace@reddit

No. I slash my 7 and Z. I learned to slash my 7 as a kid because that's how my Dutch mother taught me to write. I started slashing my Z because it's handy in math to differentiate Z from 2. I've never heard of slashing a q.

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Hopeful_Pizza_2762@reddit

Bingo!

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CouldBeBetterForever@reddit

I've never seen anyone do it. I do it with "Z" and "7" but even that isn't super common here.

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Over_Construction908@reddit

In high school I used the slash 7 and my American teachers told me to stop doing it

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Blutrumpeter@reddit

It's more common in fields with a lot of written math. Same with the slashed 7 and some people do the line through the 0. I curl my lowercase q

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MonsieurRuffles@reddit

Math major here - I still slash my 0, 7, and z but have never slashed a q.

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Hopeful_Pizza_2762@reddit

Exactly. Thanks.

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fludeball@reddit

I'm 55 and have never heard of this.

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epoxyfoxy@reddit

I've been doing it since my Spanish teacher (from Spain) did it. I also slash my Z and 7.

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presvil@reddit

Yes

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lurking_mz@reddit

I do the 0 or 7 but not qs.

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cruzecontroll@reddit

We don’t do that here

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biggreasyrhinos@reddit

No, I slash z and 7 out of habit (medical field with lots of hand-written numbers) to avoid confusion, but I can't think of ever seeing a slashed q. I've seen plenty of c with a line over it to mean with, but never that.

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