Why do we say 0 as O in phone numbers?

The obvious one here being that in military time you read it as written, whereas in 24hr you read it as intended e.g oh eight hundred hours Vs 8 o'clock.

Military time is also written without a colon

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Madbrad200@reddit

Bizarre that this is downvoted. That's definitely not a 24hr clock thing to read it as written, it's military time.

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Logical_fallacy10@reddit

Well ignorance is wide spread on Reddit :)

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Chemical-Lettuce2497@reddit

12 FUCKING MINUTES AND I CAN PLAY 007 FIRST LIGHT!!!

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colin_staples@reddit

Ferrari 308

Three Oh Eight

Never Three Zero Eight

Never Three Hundred And Eight

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Albert_Herring@reddit

The A three oh three, highway to the sun

Error four oh four, not found.

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Albert_Herring@reddit

Boeing seven oh seven. Six oh six with Robbie Savage. The Beatles' one after nine oh nine.

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LordJebusVII@reddit

Let's see what's on the nine oh five shall we?

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ABraines@reddit

We don't on the trains - 61016 six one zero one six. See it. Say it. Sorted.

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SocieteRoyale@reddit

they always say 6 1 oh 1 6 on the little sound clip they play though

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Kezmangotagoal@reddit

It says sorted? I honestly thought it said ‘sort it’ - my whole life has been a lie!

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McBuk@reddit

We do though? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPj3oTBglWw

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DameKumquat@reddit

The newer recordings say six, one-on-one, six, to emphasise that it's like calling 101 for the police, only in text form.

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ddttm@reddit

For train times we do though? “the seven oh eight was late again this morning”.

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ABraines@reddit

You're right, I've never thought of that

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peppermint_aero@reddit

We say zero when we are going slower because we want to really enunciate the number to make it really clear. I'm sure I've heard both usages for that particular phone number.

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MrMonkeyman79@reddit

I find 'oh' is frequently used in place of zero with all numbers, and the reason is likely that it rolls off the tongue better.

Zero is usually reserved for alpha numeric things where 'oh' and zero need to be distinguished.

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evenstevens280@reddit

I just realised I say my mobile number as "Zero-seven-five..." but there is another 0 in there, to which I say "Oh"

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mckjerral@reddit

I do this but the other way around, the first one is oh, then a zero in the middle.

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TheFourTruthz@reddit

Yeah, and one syllable vs two syllables.

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doctorgibson@reddit

You say it the same way in dates. You don't say Nineteen Zero-Five, you say Nineteen Oh-Five

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JeffSergeant@reddit

Using 'Zero' for the number is quite a recent import from America in itself, RIP 'naught'.

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Spiritual_Loss_7287@reddit

Not if you've had military or police radio training.

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I’ve found that saying zero instead of nought gets me heard more clearly and quickly when rattling off a phone number or address, especially over the phone and it’s just caught on in my personal vocab. RIP nought indeed

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RipCurl69Reddit@reddit

This is how my work has trained us to make safety critical phonecalls, but it soon bled over into how I just generally speak on the phone

Same with the phonetic alphabet, sounds weird but I like using it because it is very convenient

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WhaleMeatFantasy@reddit

No one ever said nineteen nought five.

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JeffSergeant@reddit

I meant more generally not in years in particular, but "Nineteen ought five" was used back in the day, or nineteen hundred and 5.

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5point806g@reddit

I gather there is still a legacy use of “ought” - the USians talk about a rifle calibre of 0.3 inches from 1906 as a “thirty ought six” which differentiates it from other 0.3 inch rifles.

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OmmadonRising@reddit

It was all for nought!

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Kezmangotagoal@reddit

We do it in loads of things lol

We don’t generally zero as much in this country…

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Donkeytonk@reddit

Easier because it’s only one syllable.

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ddrummond88@reddit

It's quicker to say that "Zero", easier to say than "Naught", and crucially, the person you're giving the number to would have to be a complete retard to not understand what you meant when you say "O"

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TH1CCARUS@reddit

I don’t.

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Spax123@reddit

oh takes less effort to say than zero

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FuzzyDuck81@reddit

My previous job used to involve a lot of archiving so i got into the habit of using zero whenever reading numbers out, when writing i usually cross my 0s and 7s too... in a similar vein, when teaching my niece i got into the habit of using "correct" instead of "right", to save confusion on directions

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sockeyejo@reddit

My father used to drink drive. I had to give him directions once when i was a child and that's when I learnt that when a drink is repeating back the directions, it's better to say "correct", not "that's right" otherwise you'll drive round in circles for hours while the drink gets increasingly angry and blames you. Good times and all that.

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gord2002@reddit

Fits into jingles better, like oh 81 - 811 - 8181

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SofaJockey@reddit

Though if I'm reading out a serial number or code I'll use 'zero' for precision.

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Nervous_Split_3176@reddit

faster

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iEuphemia@reddit

What's weird is that I use a mixture of both within the same phone number if I'm reciting it to someone. I'll start with "oh two oh" and then if the rest of the number has a 0 in it, that'll be a zero.

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GonzoBurger@reddit

I say zero, although I worked a lot of call centre jobs in my youth and it was just the best choice to avoid misunderstandings on what number I'm saying.

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dan_g97@reddit

The Hastings Direct advert jingle wouldn't have sounded the same if we said zero.

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JeffSergeant@reddit

And Guardian Direct wouldnt have worked at all.

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Ok_Shirt983@reddit

Nought eight nought nought nought nought one nought six six

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Logical_fallacy10@reddit

I say zero

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Rocinante23@reddit

I'll always just say "zero" to avoid confusion

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fussyfella@reddit

My theory is that it is a simple, single syllable word so rolls off the tongue when saying sequences of digits all the rest of which are single syllable. Zero is two syllables and would interrupt the flow.

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the-nosey-one@reddit

O is short for zero

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JoeNTMY@reddit

I guess it's just a shortened version of the word zero

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the-nosey-one@reddit

Oh yeah

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MissingScore777@reddit

I always use zero for 0 as otherwise people mistake it for 4.

That issue could be specific to North East accent though (I'm not full on Geordie, I'm from Durham, however outside the North East people struggle to recognise the difference).

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Ok_Shirt983@reddit

Can you please record yourself saying zero? I am doing my best pj and Duncan impression and saying zero over and over to myself and can not for the life of me get it to sound anything like what four might sound like in any accent.

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General_Membership64@reddit

Think he's saying 0 like "oar"

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MissingScore777@reddit

Wrong way round. I'm saying my 'oh' sounds like 4 to a lot of people so I have to say zero instead.

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G10ATN@reddit

I listen to the professionals...

Oh one one eight, nine nine nine, eight eight one, nine nine nine, one one nine, seven two five... Three

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WeDoingThisAgainRWe@reddit

We do use it for some other things. Bank card numbers are another common one. People often say 1905 (for example) as nineteen oh five. Double oh gauge is another.

Why? No idea but it definitely seems to come naturally.

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Albert_Herring@reddit

O and OO and HO gauges use the letter O not the digit 0.

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WeDoingThisAgainRWe@reddit

Originally it was a zero, the letter O was added later

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ultimateberk@reddit

Personally i say zero

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KingForceHundred@reddit

Me too.

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Constant-Tax-8240@reddit

I work with French speakers a lot, and it's funny noticing the little cultural things around numbers and language. For example, in English everyone seems to have their own little cadence for a phone number. I might say out loud the same phone number in a different pattern to someone else, but in French they always do it the same, in pairs of numbers, with each pair said as the whole number it is. As some of you may well know, french numbers start to get a bit spicy once you get past 70, which makes writing down a phone number in french extra difficult for the divvy Brit like myself. Also, if there's a number for example 1004, an ID number for something, we English tend to say, one double oh four, or one zero zero four. The french would use either mille quatre (one thousand and four) or dix zero quatre (ten zero four).

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peppermint_aero@reddit

We say oh if the zero is in the middle of two other numbers. Like bus numbers, room numbers.

"One oh five" for bus 105 or room number 105.

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MaltedMilkBiscuits10@reddit

I use zero and occasionally naught in the right situation.

I always get a u wot M8? When I say naught. Think it's older generation English but I've always been around oaps.

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Custardnufc@reddit

One of my biggest annoyances in life is people who start their phone number 'oh-seven' the say zero later in the number.

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Gustavthegoose@reddit

Guilty, but it annoys me too. Why do we do this

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kjus13@reddit

That was my pet peeve in a job with safety critical communications. I always reminded people that O is a letter, not a number.

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BionicWallaby@reddit

I bet you were loved

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PutTheKettleOff@reddit

Given it's a safety critical context, there's a fair chance that rules like these are written in blood.

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Tando10@reddit

Last week when someone was telling me their password, I said "What do you mean Zero P, there has to be a number in it."

"Yeah, Zero P"

"Ye but zero's not a numb--Oh fuck my life". I mentally conjured an image of an O when I heard zerO.

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Lanthanidedeposit@reddit

Interesting - we need to find out. Double Oh Seven, pick your tickets up from Miss Moneypenny and have a safe journey. Oh Double O Seven, try not to break anything this time.