10 Ways Brits and Americans Use Numbers Very Differently

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In today's video, I look at some of the numerical differences between Britain and America.
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[@LostinthePond]

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[@wsmith6170]

So wait, you still say 7 pm even though the clock actually states 1900? I do because I was in the US military, but why would you say 7 pm if no clock ever says that?

[@dallasarnold8615]

My son, a high school math teacher has a formerly Russian student, who was quite confused by our numbers. Whereas we write 7,000.05, the Russians write it 7.000,05. Note, the comma and the decimal point is transposed.

[@brettbuck7362]

The Zip Code is 9 digits, but you can use just the first 5 in most cases.

[@nathanahubbard1975]

I'm surprised you'd get that "oh" for "zero" thing wrong, since I've almost never heard anyone say "zero" if it's in the middle of a number. Like say ... an FM radio station, or anything else really.

[@elainebradley8213]

My father always said naught.

[@arrakaarkana6281]

Zip codes are actually 9 characters long, but the last 4 are only used for extreme specificity

[@eTraxx]

I sometimes get mail with those 4 additional numbers .. such as from my bank.

[@wyattstevens8574]

I think sometimes there are 2 more for some reason!

[@toddfraser3353]

When you need to get it delivered a little quicker and with less chance of error in routing. Banks, Insurances, for example with mail to each other with the +4 also PO boxes often will have a +4 zip code that matches the PO Box.

[@TT_09]

I NEVER use those extra 4, but my official mail does. But even when ppl get my zip code slightly wrong, it still gets to my house, they really deliver!

[@belg4mit]

They are not. This can easily be verified on the USPS website. The nine digit format is ZIP+4

[@randolpho-]

People here in the US do say "OH" for zero. But I guess more interchangeably than a British person would.

[@bonecanoe86]

People saying "Oh" for zero was a huge pet peeve of my middle school math teacher, lol.

[@DurkMcGerk]

Beverly Hills Nine oh Two One oh

[@simplerider3159]

The Four Oh Five Freeway. The Four Oh Nine cleaner. Three One Oh area code. I used to live in Southern California and the Oh is widely used. I moved to the Midwest and I guess the Oh is not used as much. I think most people use Zero.

[@469ka37]

I think the main distinction is we only use "oh" when it's not the first number. When it is the first number we're more inclined to say "zero" to avoid confusion

[@Xen10k]

I talk to customers on the phone for work, and ‘oh’ is used for zero all the time Zero gets used/emphasized when you want to make sure there is no misscomunition.

[@jeanjones3364]

US Postal worker here, the postal zip code is eleven digits, 5 digit zip code, 4 digit route and stop number, and then the last 2 digits of your house number, but most people only use the 5 or 9 digit codes. The bar code on the bottom of the front of the envelope will have all 11 embedded in it.

[@kmetz878]

Wow, I didn't know about the last 2 digits! I feel like you just shared the top secret postal code... 😉

[@LegendStormcrow]

Didn't know we had that many digits. I've only seen the 5 and 9.

[@AzureIV]

There are two more after the nine digits?! Thank you for that information.

[@N0616JCProductions]

Huh?! TIL!

[@user-wc1lp4xl2r]

ok , and how do they get the US house number in two digits?

[@eugenebean234]

In many places I’ve lived in Florida we also say “Oh” in place of “zero” when reading out numbers. For instance, radio stations: “one-oh-two-point-five.” But if you are reading something with numbers and letters mixed it’s expected to specify whether it’s an actual O or 0

[@iyaayas]

5:00 - In the 90s, I only used a 7 digit number when calling locally. 10 digits caused a long distance charge.

[@The_One_In_Black]

It's very interesting traveling from places where the area code is mandatory to places where it's still optional. Although giving your number without an area code probably means you use landlines more than cell phones nowadays.

[@sion8]

​@@The_One_In_Black In the U.S. since, I think the 2010s, it is mandatory to always give your area code in all of the country.

[@The_One_In_Black]

@@sion8 Ah, then some people just didn't get the memo. I worked at a call center 2013-2015 and some people didn't even seem to know their area codes, and got mad that the 7-digit number wasn't enough for me to look up their account.

[@rosameryrojas-delcerro1059]

Now, in reality even area codes etc can be irrelevant due to cell phones. My families cell phones for example, we originally got cell phones years back in another state but still kept the same numbers when we moved. So we get more political and spam calls from our previous state than this one because people assume that because of our area code, we are still living there...

[@joermnyc]

The change is because larger metropolitan areas ran out of numbers in one area code, so they had to start overlaying a second, third and even forth area code for the same place! So rather than it just randomly giving you one of the 3 or four people with the number 123-1234, you have to put in the extra digits now.

[@arcanewyrm6295]

A spoken "oh" in place of a zero is quite common in the US, especially between other digits in a string. Examples may include: The 405 freeway in California is verbally called "the four oh five". Engine sizes in older cars, referred to by their displacement in cubic inches. Ford three oh two. Chevy three oh five. Chevy four oh nine (Beach Boys song about it). Cleaning products. "Formula 409" is advertised as "formula four oh nine". Airplanes. Cessna two oh six. Boeing seven oh seven. Military time (slightly slang). "Reveille will be at oh four hundred." Officially called zero four hundred, but "zero" is commonly spoken as "oh" in these instances. Fahrenheit temperatures above 100°. "The high today will be one oh four" is interchangeable with "the high today will be a hundred and four". Zip codes. I remember back in the 80s and 90s, you could write to MTV Studios in New York for whatever reason. They would put the zip code for a mailing address up on the TV screen while verbally reading it, and "10016" was always spoken as "one double oh one six". Many folks also say "oh" instead of "zero" in phone numbers, or any string of numbers where a letter would not be used. It's just verbal shorthand, as "oh" rolls much more quickly off the tongue than "zero" does.

[@vincem3748]

Radio stations too, e.g. "New Jersey one oh one point five" where I live

[@vincem3748]

Also, the old-timey TV show Hawaii Five-O, a reference to Hawaii being the 50th state to join the union

[@elevanesc]

"Write to me, Stick Stickly, P.O. Box 963, New York City, New York state, one oh one oh eight."

[@frostyw]

Also in California the people often prefix the highway number with "the". The 5, and The 405. In Massachusetts (here) it's more common to hear just "95" or "495".

[@Shashu_the_little_Voidling]

You forgot the most important example. The five oh first legion

[@clintonjurgens7239]

As an engineer (American), I learned to write a seven with the horizontal stroke through the middle to distinguish it from a one, and a zero with a diagonal stroke to distinguish it from the letter o.

[@farrier2708]

I do that as well. However, being a Brit, I'm considered "special". 🤪 That's because very few people in UK actually use the French 7, with the extra stroke.

[@bricefleckenstein9666]

I've seen the slashed 7, but never used it, I DID use the slashed 0 for decades, learned it when I was a Ham - but gradually have stopped, because too many people misread it as a 1.

[@eliasb8]

I am amazed that, in today's age, you still write anything by hand. Don't you use the computer to write your engineering stuff?

[@farrier2708]

@@eliasb8 The greatest aid to imagination is the pencil. It immediately expresses what is in your head, without having to correct what AI thinks you are thinking. Creativity is a human attribute that cannot be matched by machines.

[@eliasb8]

@@farrier2708 Thanks for your friendly - none passive agressive - response. 😊 You made a fair point. 👍

[@chadboffin]

Under the old British system a thousand million was called a milliard.

[@jorgerine]

That’s from the French who also call one thousand billion a billiard.

[@christiansrensen5958]

Yeah in most widely spoken EU languages (German, French, Spanish etc) it goes million, milliard, billion

[@kipenknos]

I can add to this Polish (milion, miliard, bilion, biliard). Wonder how many more languages have that. Learning English I always thought that we added those to our language. Looks like it is the other way - British just got rid of them.

[@christiansrensen5958]

@@kipenknos polish and English added many words (including these) from French. It is only American English who had changed it. Everyone else then followed in the 70s.

[@jhgylugkfhfhlgf]

Dutch has that as well (miljoen, miljard, biljoen, biljard, etc.)

[@lisapop5219]

O was very common when I was growing up. Everyone I knew, for some reason, would say O unless they were specifically talking about math. For example, remember the tv show 90210? Nobody called it nine zero two one zero. I still heard it often. Like if you're saying that it is 5:05, you say O.

[@zeekynote3136]

I was honestly surprised to hear him say its not common here in the States. I and lots of people I know do it. Good point about the 90210 also!

[@eugenepolan1750]

@@zeekynote3136 My Mom's old typewriter used the letter O in upper-case to represent the numeral 0 and used a lower-case l for the numeral 1. They saved two keys that way. None of that made any difference back before we started writing computer code.

[@anndeecosita3586]

It’s not unheard of to see a seven with the middle line if it’s handwritten verses printed.

[@jerseygirlinatl7701]

It think it goes back to the manual typewriter days when use the 'O' key for O and 0.

[@TonyP_Yes-its-Me]

I don't say "O". I say "O".

[@wessexdruid7598]

The 24 hour clock in the UK isn’t military time - it’s railway time. Not that we ever refer to it like that.

[@markylon]

We call it 24 hour clock

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

@@markylon we just call it time.

[@wessexdruid7598]

@@markylon I thought I said that...

[@nomercyinc6783]

the 24 hour clock didnt originate from railyards. military time comes before every single railroad

[@tertled]

In the US, O is a letter, 0 is a number.

[@f0rth3l0v30fchr15t]

On postcodes, one intersting thing about British postcodes is that in most cases the last character changes depending on which side of the road your house is on. So as long as you're posting within the UK, all you really need is the house/flat number and postcode.

[@lambdafish291]

Just a quick correction: The school years system is only used by England and Wales. Scotland actually removes reception year so they are one ahead of England, but they also denote P1-P7 as primary school and S1-S6 (usually said as "1st year") as secondary school. Its interesting that within britain we have different classifications for school numbers

[@musicandbooklover-p2o]

The system I grew up with in NZ and which makes perfect sense to me. Here (Ireland) we have junior/senior infants (ages 4 and 5) then Class 1-6 (7 - 12 years old) then at secondary you have 1st year up to 6th year (13 - 18 years old) which makes it easy to know the age of the child and tells you where they are in the school system. Year numbers are a headache especially as countries all start at different ages.

[@alanstebbings2886]

They weren't called by year numbers in the UK when I was at school Mind you some areas went primary,junior,secondary while others had middle schools

[@daffers2345]

The ZIP in ZIP code is an acronym for "Zone Improvement Plan" and is often seen capitalized for that reason. It is actually relatively recent in the grand scheme of things, being fully implemented in 1963. As for phone numbers, those used to be different as well; they were seven digits with the first 2 numbers represented by letters. The Glenn Miller song _PEnnsylvania 6-5000_ is a reference to this -- and yes, that's how it's spelled! As more and more numbers were assigned, it was decided to expand with area codes and dk away with the letter assignations. When I was a kid we only had to dial the 7 digit number if calling locally. But there are so many numbers now -- in fact, I had to switch numbers last year and I got a new area code, though I have lived here all my life! The times, they are a-chaingin'.

[@Mahomie_15]

I lived in Athens, GA as a teenager, and we moved there just at the point when the northern part of Georgia split their area codes. Before then the entire Northern part of Georgia had area code 404. After then, 404 was reserved for Metro Atlanta, and everywhere else in the region switched to 706. Now there are so many parts of Northern Georgia that have overlays of different area codes, such as Atlanta: 404/470/678/770, and maybe more, where Athens has 470/706/760.

[@mnntropy5615]

I memorized my home phone number at a very early age because it was 3-4567. Only 5 digits were needed to call locally.

[@kryw10]

When I was very small, a local heating and cooling had a commercial with a jingle that sang “call Westport-1 7-100!” I used to know the old form for my grandparents phone, but I’m old now and I’ve forgotten it.

[@dougbrowning82]

PEnnsylvania (73) was the switching office name, and AT&T had a book of all the approved office names, nationwide.

[@jimcurt99]

relatively recently- 61 years ago.... are you 61 years old???

[@gl15col]

I grew up in the US calling 9:30 as half past 9. When I was a kid in the 50's, my phone was a party line, that is several people got their calls on one line. You had to listen for the number of rings before you picked up to make sure it was your call.

[@lisamoore6804]

My grandma had a party line 'till they did away with it.

[@Phiyedough]

We had a party line in UK but only one phone rang so you didn't get someone elses calls. The only thing you had to do was check for dialing tone before making a call.

[@miahconnell23]

The little tiny bit at the top of the number 1 I always thought was a seraph, and therefore unimportant. But I’ve since had some students from Africa, and they write that part SUPER conspicuously. Like, almost making a triangle that’s missing one side. So now i see the little crossbar that some people stick on their 7 as a thing to make sure you know it’s a 7 and not a fancy mark of ‘Euro flair.’

[@Dreyno]

Ireland didn’t have postcodes outside Dublin until 2015. A system of subdivisions called “townlands” break Ireland up into small parcels which meant postcodes weren’t as essential. When the state finally did develop a postcode system, they decided each individual house of premises should have its own individual code. An English friend of mine was laughing at that fact because they thought it was backwards but when I explained it, they realised how ingenious it is. Anywhere you need to go, you type the Eircode into your phone or satnav and it will bring you to the door. No street names, no guesswork. It’s fantastic.

[@jaqian]

It was long overdue

[@Dreyno]

@@jaqian Yes. But I’m glad they took their time and got it right when they did get around to it.

[@josephfoulger9628]

So the same as a postcode and house number…

[@Dreyno]

@@josephfoulger9628 No, it is not the same. But I do appreciate the sarcastic use of ellipses… House numbers don’t exist in rural Ireland. Neither do road names. Now, you could make up thousands of road names (and deal with the complaints) and devise a numbering system for each of them but that would take forever and still not be as useful. In the U.K., many rural addresses are not numbered or on named roads either and it relies on your postman knowing you live at “Upper Bottom Farm” or some such. God help anyone else trying to find it. And in many industrial estates etc. there is not a clear sequence or layout of buildings. And then there’s the risk of similar place names and similar street names. Just east of St. Paul’s in London there is an Angle Court, Angel Street and Angel Lane. None of them touch each other. You also have Harp Alley and Harp Lane at opposite ends of the City of London. The same with Plough Court, Plough Lane and Plough Way. I once heard of a lorry driver from Germany walk into a pub in Sligo (north west of Ireland) with an address in Rathcormac to deliver to. The barman pointed out that it was a different Rathcormac in county Cork (south of the country) that he had passed close to six hours earlier. The Irish system does away with all of that. Just check you have the correct seven digit/letter code and you can only find the correct address.

[@josephfoulger9628]

@@Dreyno in any postcode area there will not be 2 houses with the same number or name. For example I used to live at no. 14 in postcode SE25 4HP. You don’t need a road name to find that address. My uncle lives in a house with a name and you just need the name and postcode to find the address. The issue with road names you are describing simply doesn’t exist, and when people make that mistake it’s because they’ve chosen not to use the postcode, generally.

[@scooter91170]

I've got news for you, Digital Clocks can be 12 or 24 hours. 24 hour is used in all sorts, not just military, eg trains, buses, haulage, etc, ie anything where you need to be sure its ante or post meridiem, and the Postcode can get you down to a few houses, whereas the Zone Improvement Plan (ZIP) can only get you down to thousands of homes!

[@StormsparkPegasus]

I work for a bank (in IT myself), and all of our systems use 24-hour time.

[@kkita4all]

It is actually used in almost all the rest of the world, except in USA as many other things.

[@PhantomObserver]

Point about military time: a time which ends in 00 usually pronounced “hundred.” For example, seven o’clock in the evening is written 1900 but said “nineteen hundred hours.” In military voice transmissions where clarity is important, it can be pronounced “one niner zero zero.” (This is a good way of telling if an American’s been in the military for a good part of their career.)

[@WilliamHostman]

Or even Civil Air Patrol or Sea Scouts... as military radio procedure is expected from both.

[@johnanderson1245]

Try putting the time in ZULU and watch the fun begin.😂

[@snowdogthewolf]

You beat me to it. I've never heard "nineteen o'clock" before. In the States, it's "nineteen hundred hours" or simply "nineteen hundred".

[@lauralake7430]

Or if they have a pilots liscense😂, they will say niner. Im a nurse an say nineteen hundred, oh eight hundred unless i think about it and say 7 PM or 8 AM

[@ratflama8369]

@@lauralake7430Aviation uses the NATO phonetic system and “nine” is also the German (nein) pronunciation for “no” so to avoid confusion it’s pronounced “niner”.

[@severien42]

Using O for zero is used often in the us as well. It may be regional but it's used in Missouri

[@Goosefang]

Everyone I know often does this in the northeast

[@ruchusk]

I use it too. I couldn't remember if it's cuz I'm from MA or cuz I grew up watching James Bond movies

[@ChadAgain]

We use a maybe longer Ohhh here in Wisconsin for the number zero. And, may Shannon rest in peace, but she was not in a show called 'Beverly Hills, 9zero21zero'.

[@kryw10]

And Kansas.

[@Noobtaco]

Came here to say the same. I grew up in California and and my are coffee growing up was 2 ohh 9 (209) not 2 zero 9.

[@frankm.2850]

The fact that you called "Kindergarten Cop" of all things a documentary made me chuckle, and I've been having an oddly crummy morning. Thanks Laurence!

[@rowdyriemer]

When I was young, I would often say "oh" instead of "zero", but when I was in the Marine Corps and had to inventory computers, I needed to distinguish between the letter O and the number 0 when reading serial numbers.

[@stevenrussell9034]

I work in IT. We use date format yyyyMMdd. That way you can sort dates.

[@user-gs6lp9ko1c]

AStronomers do it that way too. Makes a lot more sense.

[@belg4mit]

It's an ISO spec.

[@nedludd7622]

That is more sensible.

[@jasonlescalleet5611]

This! Also, the ISO date format yyyy-MM-dd (or better still, date/time i.e. yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.fff). If you always use that format, you don’t have to remember whether your data structure uses string or DateTime-you can just call .OrderBy(x=>x.TheDate) and know you’re sorting correctly. I know not everyone’s a software developer, but I’ve started adopting this format even outside of work.

[@nate8088]

Was coming here to say this. I always do file naming as YYYMMDD

[@pleappleappleap]

Your clock observations are specific to the Midwest. Here in the Northeast, "What time is it?" leads to, "Half past."

[@kenbrown2808]

yep, "quarter 'til, quarter after," and I started using "_and a half" just to mess with people. - after the advent of primarily digital clocks, and people just reading off the numbers.

[@michmirich]

I'm not Midwest and I Dont say half past. That might just NE

[@georgeadams1853]

"Half past" is also midwestern: at least it was 60 years ago.

[@Rocketsong]

@@georgeadams1853 Nah, I'm from California. Half past is just normal American if you were born before the 80s.

[@jaycee330]

Half past what? Haft past time you got a watch.

[@radioweebdx7680]

People in the UK use both a 24 hour clock and a 12 hour clock. 24 hour clock is also used in shortwave radio listening, but shortwave radio transmissions are set to UTC time which is GMT +/- your own time zone.

[@whoviating]

Amendment to the zip code part: There is also zip+4. Essentially, the 5-digit zip code only specifies the nearest post office. The extra four serve to specify a particular address or po box.

[@PinkGeekification]

"Naught" was used in the past. If you go back and watch old Beverly Hillbillies episodes Jethro frequently says "Naught plus one is one, carry the naught" and similar silly things.

[@reejan8109]

UK = Nought; US = Naught

[@rodchallis8031]

how are you with "gazintas"? I loved the word play in that show.

[@FuscoLW]

I was just going to reference Jethro. LOL

[@piratetv1]

He could Cypher at a 6th grade level, that boy

[@NunyaBiznes-vs1gy]

Lol..and he was double nought seven

[@kevinz.9785]

As an American I put a hash mark in 7 and the letter Z. This stemmed from my physics classes in college, university to you Laurence, where the symbols, numbers and letters needed to be differentiated.

[@lorelei9393]

I do that with z but not 7 because my 2 looks like a z. Also a product of math class.

[@jonthinks6238]

In the military we used to put the Extra slash on 7. But mainly because Germans did.

[@jonathanhill6064]

*stemmed sorry, spelling OCD

[@kevinz.9785]

@@jonathanhill6064 I guess that is why I was in a physics class and not English class, LOL.

[@MRCAGR1]

The other number that had a / through it was 0 (zero) to distinguish it from O when writing in computer languages that needed to be transposed onto punch cards.

[@gregoryvnicholas]

Adding a horizontal stroke through a number seven was not a British practice until the 1970s. Lots of youngsters saw the referees on the international version of "It's a Knockout", "Jeux Sans Frontieres", writing their sevens with a horizontal stroke. It became a bit of a fashion that lingers today.

[@TyroHuman]

I learned to do that from my mom who learned it as "you must make sure your 7s never look like lazy Ts!"

[@jaqian]

I do it because my 7s are very sloppy, I also do it with the letter Zed and writing a Zero

[@Jenel_79]

The thing with british postcodes is that the first 2 letters denote the postal district (as mentioned in the video), more often than not its a city abbreviation, Liverpool is LV, Glasgow is just G, then followed by 1 or 2 numbers which are the area broken down into smaller areas. The last 3 digits are specific to your street. So technically, you could send a letter with nothing but the house number and the postcode and it would reach you. Also if you google lets say 90210 on google maps, it's going to show the whole of Beverly Hills, but if I were to type my own postcode in, it will show my exact street.

[@jonathansimerly5550]

As an American, I picked up the habit of crossing my 7s about 15 years ago. I was working in shipping in an International company, and we would receive parts from European divisions with the quantities usually in their handwriting. I slowly adopted the style over time. In the interest of consistency.

[@rodchallis8031]

Back in days olden, I did a lot of hand written data recording. I adopted the bar on the 7 for reasons of clarity.

[@richardburke6902]

I believe Europeans cross their sevens because they write the numeral one with an overly-long diagonal top piece. Here in America, we just use a vertical slash with no top piece for the numeral one and therefore there was never any danger of confusing it with a seven.

[@colinmacdonald5732]

Same here, worked in a Lab, an unbarred 7 was a faux pas.

[@LindaC616]

Lol, I started doing it when I was studying languages, out of pure pretentiousness. No one has ever asked why I write 7 that way, though, so there must be enough of us

[@aj.j5833]

USN also told us to cross the 7 as well. I was already in habit of doing so having gone to a British school in Korea.

[@michaelt312]

ISO 8601 is becoming common in business due to data. The format is YYYY-MM-DD

[@bikeny]

If I am creating file names I will do that type of formatting. But if I am writing the date down, I do the mm/dd/yy or yyyy,

[@dadoctah]

Nice thing about that is that if you sort the field like a regular string of text, it comes out in chronological order like it's supposed to without requiring special handling for dates.

[@holger_p]

The confusion comes by different versions of speaking. May the 4th. Versus 4th of May, both is possible. But that's more an english only problem. Sorting number from small units to big units feels more natural to me (d/m/y) or reverse. That's why the world could agree on that.

[@stargazer7644]

@@holger_p This is called endianness. Big-endian format puts the least significant item first, little-endian puts the most significant first. Phone numbers are big-endian, email addresses are little-endian. IP addresses are big-endian, URLs are little endian. y/m/d is big-endian, d/m/y is little-endian, m/d/y is mixed-endian. Sun Sparc and Motorola 68000 are big-endian, Intel is little-endian. Computer path names are big-endian, but file names with extensions are little-endian.

[@holger_p]

@@stargazer7644 But having the smallest units in the middle, does never fit into this system. It's like saying "10 miles, 2 inches, and 20 foot". Doesn't feel good to me. Just because you have a name for it, doesn't give it any logic. From "Mixed-Endian" you cannot even conclude the order. m/d/y or y/d/m is both mixed.

[@adambrooks4612]

Thank you for combing your hair at 1:00 in. That curly cue was driving me nuts!!!

[@woodyszabo]

I just love the sense of your humour and your videos are so entertaining and wonderfully educating at the same time. Absolut kudos to you!!!!!!

[@CaseyJonesNumber1]

10:55 the use of the letter O in phone numbers in the UK is a throwback to dial phones, where the 0 (zero) had the letter O assigned to it on the dial. Until the late 1950s to make a long distance call you had to go via the Operator, so you dialled the 0, which was "O, for the Operator". When area dialling codes and automatic long distance calling was introduced, the 0 effectively meant "long distance", and so the use of O for 0 in speech remained in use, though it has become less commonplace.

[@voxveritas333]

except, to dial long distance you start with "1", not zero. that's when dialing long distance on a landline; from a cell phone no 1 is needed, just the area code + the 7-digit number.

[@CaseyJonesNumber1]

​​​​​​@@voxveritas333I was talking about the UK..which your terminology and spelling suggests you are not from. In the UK, you cannot make a call by dialling a 1 first, except 100 for the operator, or some special service numbers.

[@FluffyRAM]

Fellow expat and subscriber here. Funny story regarding post codes and zip codes, and a very valuable lesson I learned when I first emigrated.... Back in England I could navigate to a post code and be within a few houses, then just look for the house number I wanted. So... On an early trip to the US I put the zip code into my GPS and there was not a hotel in sight when I reached my destination. Of course with hindsight, it's blatantly obvious that using only 5 numerical digits to cover the entire USA could not possibly almost pinpoint your location like an English post code, but when you're worn out after a long international flight, well, I was on auto-pilot and just did as I'd always done back across the pond 🤦🏼‍♀️ I ended up in a dodgy neighborhood after dark but fortunately I had the hotel phone number, so all ended well. Thought I'd share so any of our fellow Brits coming to the US don't make the same mistake. (Zip codes take you to the town center). Love your channel Laurence. Keep up the good work. Thank you 👍 🇬🇧 🇺🇸 😊

[@davidfrischknecht8261]

If you had used the 9-digit form of the ZIP code and your GPS knew how to interpret it, you would have gotten a lot closer to your destination.

[@Lethgar_Smith]

The zip code is designed expressly for the post office to use in help sorting mail. It was never meant to be a useful tool for anyone else in navigation or map reading or even the delivery of your mail. It's for the mail sorters in the big processing centers. That's the only place where it actually gets used.

[@Mahomie_15]

@@Lethgar_Smith That, and nowadays they use a 5+4 format for mail, as well as GPS location to narrow down a certain neighborhood within said five-digit ZIP Code. For example, 12345-6789, where the five digits before the hyphen denotes a ZIP Code within a city, and the four after the hyphen denote a specific subdivision or area in the ZIP Code.

[@TT_09]

Yes, zip codes have nothing to do with close proximity. My closest zip code by number would send me sooooo far away! Yet 2 blocks from my house is another zip code

[@TheDuckofDoom.]

I have worked in a building with its own 5 digit zip code. It was only one company and one street address, no suites or office numbers, just a big box with lots of mail.

[@joyfulchristina]

I say “o” for 0 quite a bit. I’m not sure if it is a regional thing, but Americans do say it that way.

[@jaqian]

I'm Irish and we say it Oh for Zero as well

[@kadyriverm]

ALSO in Scotland the school years are even more different! Primary school is P1-7 and secondary is S1-6. We usually just say P1 or Primary 1, but for secondary we'll either say S1 or first year. When you're talking about 'Britain', there's always gonna be something we do differently to the rest lol

[@gordonwyness1556]

Yes, that old English trick of subsuming Scotland in the Union, and conveniently forgetting that we do a lot of things differently from south of the border. Nursery starts at 2 years old in Scotland and at 4/5 years, children move up to Primary 1. It’s a continuous progression, so there’s no need for a so-called “reception “year. Try and get it right next time…

[@sugarplum5824]

I'm American but I also put a dash through my sevens. I wasn't taught by anyone to do this but it just made sense to me to distinguish it from ones. I've done it for decades and no one questions me on it.

[@holger_p]

Do you write your ones, with 2 strokes also ? Americans usually don't in handwriting, and then this problem doesn't exist.

[@_starfiend]

I'm British and I never put a dash through my sevens.

[@JfromUK_]

I never saw crossing 7s as a particularly British thing, but I took the decision to adopt "continental 7s" in school, just as I always write a 1 and a lowercase L with a "hook" so they're all distinguishable on their own. In my limited experience, 1s and 4s are often handwritten differently in the US too!

[@WGGplant]

Ones for me are just lowercase "l". My sevens dont have a slash because it has the hat, but I do draw a little brim for the hat.

[@ponyxaviors4491]

I'm American too, and I also cross my sevens. No one taught me it either - I don't really know why I do it. It might've been because of math class to distinguish from my ones, like Laurence said. I use three lines for my ones. 1 with a line underneath... Come to think of it, I don't know why I do that either 🤔

[@ralphbalfoort2909]

When I hired out on the railroad in 1974, we used the 24-hour clock for crew starting (and ending) times, but 12-hour times for public passenger timetables. Still do.

[@jackwalker4874]

In Wales the train timetables are all in 24hr time, except for the Welsh language announcements where 12hr time is used because it sounds better in the language (larger numbers are really wordy in Welsh). The auto-announcer is even capable of announcing the 14:45 ("fourteen forty-five" in the English recording) as "chwarter i dri" (quarter to three)

[@robtyman4281]

Globally, every country uses the 24 hour clock for rail travel. It's always been like this - for over 100 years. Only in the US has this never been the case.

[@romulusnr]

We switched to 24-hour time on our bedroom clock after my wife once accidentally went to her 7PM job at 7AM instead.

[@martinclark7935]

You are wrong about the clocks. In Britain some people choose to have their clocks and watches use the 24-hour clock (not your so-called 'military time', which nobody calls it). Other people choose to have their clocks and watches use the 12-hour clock. Many digital clocks and watches have the option to switch between the two. It's all a matter of personal preference.

[@MRich727]

I LOVE THE WAY YOU PRONOUNCE “MOVE”. The first syllable is stated soooooo hard. Haha

[@FionaEm]

In Australia our addresses are short (odds and evens on opposite sides of the street, starting at 1, not 100). Postcodes are four digits, no letters. Landline phone numbers used to be six digits and increased to seven as the population rose. School starts with Prep, then Years 1-12. Dates are day-month-year. Easy peasy 😊

[@MlleAdler]

I can’t stop staring at that curl!😹

[@michelejones711]

😅

[@StephanieMaireFaith]

I know right lol he never saw it stickin up untill the next cut lol 😂

[@Bedwyr7]

Fun fact. In most transport, people still use time in reference to "Zulu", or GMT, thanks to frequent time zone changes and the need to have a common reference.

[@radioweebdx7680]

Zulu time is also used in shortwave radio listening. Where Zulu time is UTC which is GMT +/- your time zone. Some people write Zulu time as 1900z which would be 1900 UTC in radio terms.

[@leberlin]

Lovely, entertaining and enlightening explanations of our little numerical differences.👍

[@lawrenced1422]

Also at least in Canada when saying a score in sports we will often say 'The Leafs lost three nothing' when the score was 3-0

[@simonbutterfield4860]

But that is still clearly as understood as saying 3-nil to me.

[@wyattstevens8574]

@@lawrenced1422 Sometimes we (States) say (I'll use OP's example of 3-0) "three to (or 'and') oh" or "three [to/and] nothing".

[@fluffyduckbutt24]

But u do say 7 not 19 hundred or whatever that, that is odd ur clocks don't say 7.

[@WilliamHostman]

Certain hockey announcers used "unanswered"... "Detroit shut down the Habs with 3 unanswered goals"... but that was back in the days of the Joe Louis...

[@outbackigloo6489]

I live in the U.S., and to me, 3-0 is said as “three nothing”.

[@powellmountainmike8853]

I am born and raised American, but I write my dates the way we did when I was in the Navy many years ago, 2 numbers for the day, three letters for the month, and 2 numbers for the year; as in today's date 15JUL24, or the past Independence Day, 04JUL24. I still use the system because it just seems the clearest one I have come across.

[@Paldasan]

A lot of it comes down to purpose. I have been brought up with and prefer dd/mm/yyyy as all digits but it can cause people a moment of hesitation as they convert the digits for month into the name of the month. Normally not an issue if that is just being used for record keeping. In military situations having the first 3 letters there can increase understanding especially under time constraints or with communication. For file storage or data collection where I am using the date and I need to keep track of it closely I will use yyyy/mm/dd with /hh:mm/etc. if required. This helps enormously with sorting and tracking. It is automatically set in order.

[@manchagojohnsonmanchago6367]

Yep the US military is metric and writes date, time and temperatures properly .. because in the military things are logical

@@manchagojohnsonmanchago6367 Nah, the US never cares about logical, and the military even less. It's because they always work with other countries' armies, or need to be prepared to do so. And good luck trying to get the rest of the world to use US date format. Or _shudder_ US Customary units. (And the units are also because you don't want any potential source of confusion between, say, a forward observer and the artillery crews firing at the coordinates the forward observer reports)

[@frostyw]

I ended up in an multinational company, and most of my colleagues are French and Spanish. To be unambiguous when I write dates, I use ISO8601 calendar dates, e.g. 2024-07-16.

[@jnaeraespano4468]

Did that a lot, too. Especially filling out 1250-1. That and Julian dates.

[@DarthGTB]

In Brazil: - Address number can go both small and big depending on ehat end of the street and how long the street is. Odd on one side of the street and even on the other. - Postal codes have 8 digits - Dates are dd/mm/yyyy - Documents you mist memorize are RG which is state issued and CPF which is federal issued. RG has different rules per state (and will be discontinued in a few years) and CPF has 11 digits - Time is "military time" or 24h clock as we call it - About the 7, we do that too. We ad the extra - to it on hand writing. But i have a feeling this is fading away due to typing. As a side note, programmers do that to the number 0 too to distinguish it from O. But thats a reverse influence from typing as fonts used for programming usually have a striked zero

[@MTerrance]

Sorry, US postal codes are 5+4=9 digits. Most people do not use the final four digits, but commercial and governnent mail almost always does.

[@mind-of-neo]

Thanks for giving away John Q. Public's social security there. The poor guy. 😂

[@TT_09]

I wonder how good his credit is? Asking for a friend.

[@laurent90210]

if you know the state and year someone was born in, you have the first 5 digits of their social already. easy for scammers

[@KellyClowers]

@@laurent90210 yep, they are not well designed to be used as "secrets", even though we constantly use them that way...

[@KellyClowers]

Remember that time the "Lifelock" identity theft protection guy put his SSN in his ads? And repeatedly got identity frauded? Good times!

[@glossaria2]

Okay, taking it by the numbers... (heh) Zip codes: Since the early 80s, USPS has been using extended zip codes (or zip +4), so it's typically 9 digits (unless you live in a small enough town that the specificity doesn't really matter). We're not entirely unfamiliar with number-and-letter zip codes, either, since that's what our Commonwealth neighbors to the North use. Also, fun fact, older phone number exchanges are derived from town names just as your postal codes are. So for example, the Glenn Miller Song "Pennsylvania 6-5000" refers to the old format of the Pennsylvania Hotel's phone # in NYC, PE6-5000 ("PE" for the area around Penn Station), or 736-5000 (look at the letters under the numbers on a phone keyboard). Military time: in the military, they'd say "seventeen hundred" for 5pm. (and for 5 am, they'd say "oh five hundred.") Personally, I use it at home because I have occasional insomnia, and it can be very disorienting to wake up at, say, 7:00 in the summer and not be sure which one it is. Although I think it was more common when we had more analog clocks around, some Americans will just as easily say "quarter past/after 9" or "half past" or "quarter to/of 10" as 9:15, 9:30, and 9:45. ("Half nine" confuses me utterly because I don't know if you mean after or until the hour. In German "halb neun" would be 8:30, so you're not even consistent with the rest of Europe... although I'd guess that lumping Britain with Europe could be considered "fightin' words" post-Brexit and all.) Fractions: I think it depends on context... in math, I'm more likely to say one-fourth, but for a recipe I'd say a quarter cup, and a measurement would be "quarter-inch plywood" or "a quarter-mile down the road." Zero: Sorry, no. Americans are not only just as likely to say "oh" for "zero," (Beverly Hills 9-oh-2-1-oh, anyone?) we'll sometimes use them both in reciting a phone number: ("Her phone number is two-oh-two, three-five-zero, nine-five-oh-four"). In sports we'd say a score is six-to-zero or six-nothing (except in tennis, which is weird). "A big goose egg," zip, zilch, nada, and bupkis are all slangy, somewhat cheeky ways of saying zero (those last two are Spanish and Yiddish, btw). And you'd say "six-zip" or "six-zilch," not "six to zilch." (And I think I've used "zilch" more in this paragraph than I've ever used in over 50 years of life... that could be a generational or regional thing? I'm from NY.) Crossing sevens: Americans don't typically cross our 7's because many of us don't hook our 1's-- it's just a straight vertical line. (Which creates a different problem, which is why I generally loop my lower-case L's.) I *did* pick up the habit of hooking and crossing my 7's, but that's because I thought the way my German grandmother made her 7's looked cool.

[@romulusnr]

You know many people that regularly send mail to Canada?

[@wohlhabendermanager]

"although I'd guess that lumping Britain with Europe could be considered "fightin' words" post-Brexit and all" You are confusing the EU and Europe. That's not meant as an attack, many people - including Europeans - have difficulty distinguishing between the two. :) GB left the EU, but they are still part of Europe. And unless a huge earthquake happens, they will always be part of Europe.

[@DianeDfictionfan]

So much of this I could have written, especially using military time on my devices because otherwise I don't know whether the day is coming or coming (A sleep schedule? What's one of those when it's at home [in bed]?) (though not every American understands how the military use it; I actually saw where someone had written something like oh-ten-hundred! 🙄🤦) and the utter confusion of "half nine", which dear Laurence seems oblivious to, given the LACK of mention. He does state several things that hit me as, "We do *so* say that, not infrequently," /oh/ for zero being the biggest issue, although when I'm reciting a number or mixed code to someone I take care to use "zero" the same as I say "T for Thomas", i.e., to prevent misunderstanding. In handwriting or sans serif type (such as is common online, even for serial numbers, passwords, Captchas, UPCs, and URLs - I wish makers, sellers, and programmers would wise up!), the frequent visual confusion of 0/O and 1/I (big i)/l (small L) is worse. When I *write down* such a number, you'd better believe my 1s get little hooks, and any lowercase ls (Ls) get little "foot" hooks, too! ~~ To digress further, I'm a "font-aholic", and there are *so many* curvy/swirly scripts where two, three, or all of 2, Q, L, and Z look like the same shape, or at least alternately-interpretable shapes! (Ugh, btw: I say Z *needs* 3 strokes, with a pointed top corner, if it's going to have a flattish bottom like an L, rather than a tail! Otoh, tailed/"two-story" Zs can be too 3-ish.) Cheers for the elegant European 7 (a tick on a 7's left tip can help distinguish it from 1, too) - though I personally hate straight-stick 1s *or* 7-ish 1s w/LARGE hooks - and maybe even cheers to slashing your zeros to make unmistakable null-signs (oh, oops, unless you're Scandinavian, w/Ø... use a dot instead)! ~~ Sorry, alphanumeric glyphs are a special interest of mine. End digression, and end the internet rabbit hole looking for examples and background that made the big time-gap between my hitting 👍 and posting my reply.

[@glossaria2]

@@romulusnr I worked in the hospitality industry in northern NY, so... yes. Canadians take vacations, too!

[@erichbaumeister4648]

I thank you all who have taken the time and made the effort to write such informative and interesting comments! 😊

[@Hosterofdarest]

I've been using military time for years. It's easier for me to understand, especially when setting alarms, so I don't accidentally set an alarm for the wrong time (5 pm instead of 5 am).

[@DemoWarlock]

as a person that rotates between night shift and day shift every 4 months, 24 hour clock is very useful

[@kryw10]

I prefer it because I have problems with time and punctuality and I don’t have to think about which 5 o’clock is want.

[@floydlooney6837]

AM and PM is a 24 hour clock

[@DemoWarlock]

@@floydlooney6837 nope it utilizes 12 hours. However if I’m setting alarms it’s incredibly easier to set it to 17:10 rather than 5:10 pm cuz I might set incorrectly. It reduces user error

[@sonne6522]

I like the 24 hours clock to get rid of the 12 am or pm problem

[@trickygoose2]

​@@DemoWarlockI have a digital alarm clock that uses the 12 hour clock. I have once or twice overslept because I set the alarm for PM instead of AM.

[@jamesfischer2427]

The 24 hour clock is used in many contexts in the USA, but not by the general public. It is used in hospitals, and even in some manufacturing settings. Anywhere that 3:00 am and 3:00 pm are equally likely tomes for an event to occur ..

[@duncansnowden6857]

I would say it's much the same in Britain, to be honest. I mean, Lawrence isn't *wrong* exactly - it's probably more widely understood over here - but I wouldn't call it normal.

[@sboinkthelegday3892]

Same as Latin, in law, medicine... basically if you actualy need to be useful and not just a skinner box pigeon. Clock needs to show an exact number because peasants have no internal monologue, so for people who it means nothing but counting hours to get off your shift, 12 hours is fine. When you might care what time of day you voted Yemeni kids to die, it's more important to count the whole dial. The pilot can just drool and shout Semper Fi tho.

[@stevethepocket]

@@duncansnowden6857 So what do your digital clocks say?

[@DitzyNizzy2009]

2:10 - Where I'm from (Manchester), some postcodes have five characters. The same also applies for, iirc, Birmingham, Liverpool, Sheffield, Glasgow and parts of London.

[@lancer1993]

As someone from Australia its interesting to see the differences and how they relate to what we use. Its pretty much a mix of both because of media and pop culture from TV and movies.

[@robertshepherd5163]

In the USA, the total zip code for an address is 5 numbers a dash (-) and four more numbers which identifies the exact property. Very few people seem to include the last four numbers.

[@SandraDodd]

It doesn't help individuals with first-class mail to use the last four. Those are for large bulk mailings. The rate is cheaper for having "zip + 4." and they needed to be sorted and bundled in order. Not a by-hand or home job. :-)

[@stargazer7644]

@@SandraDodd While you get a cheaper rate for bulk mail, those extra digits are actually used on any piece of mail in the system, including first class mail. In fact, optionally there's actually two more digits beyond the 4 that uniquely identifies any individual mailbox in the entire country. This is called Zip+6. With Zip+6 nothing else in the envelope address need even be looked at.

[@JeremyWS]

I'm an American and funnily enough I always have my phone set to military time. I find it easier to use for things like keeping track of when I took my meds, because I don't have to write am/pm. I like doing this. I also have a lot of family in the military, so that maybe a contributor as to why. Also, it's not just the military that uses military; I've recently learned that trains in the USA often run on military time too. I find that interesting. Keep up the good work.

[@bikeny]

I started keeping my watch in 24-hour mode when I started working with computer systems, since that's the way they had them set.

[@cloudkitt]

Also American and I keep my phone on 24 hour time. It's not really that I find it better or easier, I just feel like it's good practice to make sure I can make that conversion without thinking while traveling and such :)

[@douglasdarling7606]

I'm going to have to applaud your segue into the commercial😂

[@jescis0]

I never seen the word segue before you said it 😅😅 I first heard of segue when the devices you stand on and are really expensive to even rent that only people like Steve Wozniak can afford them… Segway… 😮😮

[@ccityplanner1217]

The highest building number I know in Britain is an office block called 1,010 Great West Road, Brentford, Middx.

[@Ravendarkwytch]

I live in the UK and I very rarely use military time, although I was brought up to recognise the hands of a clock as opposed to digital numbers.

[@davidjackson2580]

I'm also in the UK and usually use the 24 hour clock, but that's probably because I always used railway timetables a lot and they have used 24 hour time at least since I was a teenager (in the 1970s) and probably ever earlier.

[@TheMcIke]

I grew up in Pennsylvania Dutch area and the line through the seven was common. Also, the number one looked like a mountain peak. As for “oh” for zero, I hear and use both regularly.

[@Weepecket]

Going from Britain to Anderson, Indiana must have been some culture shock.

[@VoidVerification]

The reason why most other European countries still use "billion" to indicate one million million (10^12) is that there is usually a separate word in their languages for one thousand million (10^9), so it was always clear what was meant. Examples for 10^9: "eine Milliarde" (German), "un milliard" (French), "miliard" (Polish)...

[@donneverae3050]

Talking about time, I confused a lot of brits in the 70s by calling 8:45 "quarter to nine."

[@thedoobieshrew0244]

Really? "Quarter to" is commonly used. Have always used it and heard it from my parents and grandparents

[@grahamsmith9541]

No you didn't that is normal speech.

[@Myrtlecrack]

In the US military the term "O dark thirty" denotes a time after midnight but before dawn. Great video Laurence! Each new video is like sitting down to the season premier of a favorite TV show.

[@WilliamHostman]

As I was taught by Gunny Bradley, "double-zero-thirty," "zero-zero-thirty," or "zero-thirty-hours" is 0030... "zero-dark-thirty" being the casual "0000 hrs to sunrise or revile" whichever was earlier.

[@lms0719]

Yes, this would zero dark thirty rather than O dark thirty.

[@Myrtlecrack]

@@lms0719 I have heard it said "Zero" rather than "oh" on occasion.

[@naturalmosaic]

The jump ahead to skip the ad got you an instant sub! 🙌🏻

[@ccityplanner1217]

Brits often write time in 24 hours, but unlike Germans, never in speech except in a railway context.

[@kevinbarry71]

American ZIP Code is nine digits. It used to be five but the extension was added quite some time ago

[@cuzned1375]

Thankfully, though, those 4 extra digits aren’t mandatory for postal customers (at least not yet). Give the USPS the 5 traditional digits, and they’ll figure out which 4 they wanna tack on the end.

[@FluffyRAM]

Yes, but hardly anyone uses the +4 and it isn't actually needed or required 🤷‍♀️

[@terrydamron4770]

But the last 4 is not really used.. in the us..

[@kevinbarry71]

@@terrydamron4770 I disagree. It is. Maybe if you're sending a letter to your friend it's not used. But check your envelopes. You'll see it

[@terrydamron4770]

@kevinbarry71 incoming will see it maybe once in a blue mooñ. But one ever uses it here that I no of.. ever

[@spencerbookman2523]

I worked all of my career in an engineering context and early on I started dashing my sevens and back-slashing my zeros. My printing changed too: putting tails on lower-case tees and the like.

[@r6u356une56ney]

Also in the US Military, 19:00 would be verbalized as "Nineteen Hundred".. And 15:30 as "Fifteen Thirty" - note that the suffix "hours" is NOT spoken, despite most movies and TV shows presenting it that way.

[@jnaeraespano4468]

I said hours. So did a lot of my shipmates. Not always, but we did.

[@rwwilson21]

As a military brat, me and my family use military time. It's easier to know what's the time between morning and afternoon/night.

[@arthurgordon6072]

In the UK, the '24 hour' clock became common use due to railway time tables.

[@nomercyinc6783]

thats absurd because military time exists before human railways. all of them

[@zootallures6470]

@@nomercyinc6783 That's absurd because in most of the world there is not such a thing as military time. A radio station would say: We are sending between 19 and 7 and everybody knows what they are talking about. You would never see opening hours listed as 10am-6pm but always 10-18. And everybody knows what it's about. Not only the military.

[@seb3090]

That was more to do with local time standardisation than anything, the 'clock' has always been 24 hours, even when we called it other things. That is the sun is in roughly the same part of the sky the time period 24 hours represents regardless of what you call that time period. A standardised time, so places far enough away to affect local solar time (5 degrees (East/West) is about 20 minutes) can receive transportation services and know what the timetable of those services is precipitated time zones not the 24 hour clock.

[@heraklesnothercules.]

@@nomercyinc6783 The poster specifically stated "became *_common_* use". This does not preclude the use by the military prior to this.

[@gavinreid2741]

​@@nomercyinc6783human railways?

[@LorettaMoore1234]

The home I grew up in was 15447. As an adult I lived at 2 Long Dr. When I talked to someone on the phone they always asked for the house number. They thought the road was called Too Long.

[@anndeecosita3586]

The house I lived in the longest was 315.

[@aLadNamedNathan]

Somewhere near Pittsburgh, I bet.

[@isabellerininger6249]

I had a similar situation with my street being a number first in a string of words, albeit written as a word (Seven). Giving my address was a nightmare. They always thought my house number ended in 7. 🤦🏼‍♀️

[@LorettaMoore1234]

@@aLadNamedNathan nope, much further west.

[@aLadNamedNathan]

@@LorettaMoore1234 _MUCH_ further west? What are you talking about? Pittsburgh's practically in Ohio as it is!

[@greatestcait]

I'm actually with Lawrence on adding a horizontal stroke through the middle of the 7. It looks nicer imo, and there's no room for confusion with the letter 1. I also add a diagonal stroke through the number 0 (to avoid confusion with the letter O) and a horizontal stroke through the letter Z for style (which is pronounced "zee," you will never get me to accept zed).

[@ivar_oslo-hr3mc]

Ø is a letter in Norway and Denmark.

[@caseyleichter2309]

People in the US do sometimes say "O" to denote a zero. But less so in areas where Zero needs to be distinguished it from the letter O. Particularly when referring to any string of numbers that might include letters, such as indexed lists, codes, things like that, when you want to be sure which one you're dealing with.

[@cuzned1375]

I’m surprised that Laurence hasn’t heard zero pronounced as _oh_ here in the States - it’s pretty common in my experience. Seems like you’re most likely to hear it as _oh_ when it occurs in the midst of a string of numbers (rather than by itself or on either end of such a string). For instance, my old “mobile” number began with 308, which i invariably pronounced as “3-oh-8”. But if i had a British-style number, i’d have to train myself to say “oh-7-3” rather than “zero-7-3”.

[@nedludd7622]

"Oh" is for "Oh, I made a mistake."

[@cuzned1375]

@@nedludd7622 😊

[@simonbutterfield4860]

Yup I heard coordinates the the pilots used in Star Wars use oh for zero or naught as I used the latter as a child.

[@LillibitOfHere]

I’m also on the Great Lakes and I never use zero unless it’s the first digit.

[@Stratelier]

Personally, I think it's like whether or not you add serifs on a capital I (in hand writing/lettering)....

[@edennis8578]

I noticed how in England it's common to say, "It's a 10 minute walk" - maybe if you're 6' tall and a trained speedwalker, but as a 5'2" woman, it was always more like 20-30 minutes, which was difficult when my disabled sister and I were trying to get around. She could manage 10 minutes, but it was never actually 10 minutes. It's the same in France.

[@The_One_In_Black]

I always wondered how Google determines walking time.

[@wyattstevens8574]

@@The_One_In_Black It usually estimates 3 miles (or maybe on the other side of the Pond, 5 km) per hour.

[@geoffreycoulter2608]

In Europe, everything is a “10 minute walk”-it’s not limited to Britain. It really doesn’t matter how long the walk is, the locals always tell you the same thing.

[@jasonlescalleet5611]

Here in the US we do the same thing with drive times. “Half an hour from here” means half an hour driving. This is a pretty reasonable drive-something we might do daily or almost daily. So at freeway speeds of around 60 mph that would be around 30 miles, or 60 round trip. It becomes clear why we do *not* consider 100 miles to be a long distance.

[@LindaC616]

My Chicago suburb friends laughed in frustration when they visited me in this small colonial seaside town. I lived about 20 min uphill from city centre, and parking can be hard to find in summer.Their girls were 5 and 7. As we walked, I'd say "it's only 3 blocks " and they'd say, "3 blocks, or 3 Linda blocks?"

[@TheVitamin421]

haha "the documentary the kindergarten cop" that cracked me up, good one!

[@JohnJoannou-xq5rq]

About the numbering of streets in the UK. There is a suburb of London, East Acton, that has a first avenue, second avenue, third avenue, fourth avenue.

[@mind-of-neo]

i've used international time on my phones and stuff since i was 16 or 17. at this point i think it just makes more sense

[@nicholasharvey1232]

I wish everyone adopted 24-hour time. It's so much more logical. For instance when you want to say "Wednesday at midnight", do you mean the midnight that starts Wednesday, or the midnight that ends it? Saying 0.00 or 24.00 disambiguates this. Not to mention you never have to worry about confusing AM and PM.

@@nicholasharvey1232 Some nitpickers will say that officially, there is no "24:00", but I'm 100% with you there, and have been saying it for many years.

[@aceae4210]

something I have seen in tv schedules before is if something is starting at say 2AM/02:00 how they would show that is 26:00 (like "Wednesday 22, 26:00" instead of "Thursday 23, 02:00")

[@nicholasharvey1232]

@@aceae4210 It's an unorthodox way of telling time but guess what, it works. I actually once missed an after-midnight television program because I tuned in one night too late. Like it was supposed to be 1 AM Monday and I stayed up past midnight Monday night to see the show, not realizing that at 1 AM it would have become Tuesday. In this case, saying "Sunday night at 25:00" would have been completely unambiguous and I would have absolutely caught that show.

[@cloudkitt]

​@@nicholasharvey1232yeah but if the Brits just say the 12-hour time verbally anyway, doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose?

[@Itsa_me_MC]

Fun fact. US street addresses are often referenced to a major town, city, or county center. For example if one lived at 5268 Rose Blvd, It means they are roughly 5 miles from that central landmark. This means you can often navigate using street numbers alone if you know where your starting point is cardinal direction wise and pay attention to whether the numbers are increasing or decreasing.

[@holger_p]

With that point beeing downtown, streets have something like 5000 east and 5000 west. Which is confusing to have numbers twice on the same street. I know cities who have this, but I don't think it's a good idea.

[@PaulG.x]

We use the same house number system in New Zealand on non urban roads. It is usually from the last large locality. My house number is 1592 , it is 15.92 km or 15920 m from the nearest town. The one slight complication is that a long road might have two 1592s on it measured from two different towns , so the locality needs to be included. We have a postcode system too , but human postal workers don't understand how it works , so it is unreliable.

[@mikespangler98]

The county has a NS road called Division, and an EW road called Baseline. The addresses go outward from there, as in 20250, road name, NW. so I'm 20 miles north of Baseline, and West of Division. If I name the major cross road the other way, (Road R) you have an approximate location pretty quickly.

[@TransferPoint9346]

Distance from a reference point varies depending on the location. In Chicago, for example, there are 8 blocks in a mile and each block has 100 numbers reserved for building addresses. Hence, for every 800 building numbers, you're 1 mile away from the reference point (the intersection of State and Madison Streets in the Loop). In Salt Lake City, each block is about one-seventh of a mile, and each mile has 700 building numbers available.

[@Serenity_Dee]

The reason American street addresses are mostly four digits is because almost everywhere uses a system of block numbering, where each block of a street is numbered sequentially: 1, 2, etc, and that's the first 1 or 2 digits of all lot numbers on that block. They're referred to as the 100 block, 200 block, etc. Furthermore, all the odd lot numbers are on one side, and all the even lot numbers are on the other. In Utah, this turns into a full-on coordinate system, where an address will be something like 4230 N 18th St East, which tells you it's on the northern Block 42 of the 18th street east of the town or city's center point, and you can figure out where that is relative to you just by looking at the closest intersection.

[@blo0dchild]

Fun fact 2nd Street is/was the most popular street name in America. Learned that in the early 2000s. Not sure if still true but it makes sense cos 1st Street is usually either named Main, Broad, or Center

[@wmlindley]

In the Midwest, house numbers (street addresses) are often derived from 100-per-block, where a block is usually 1/8 mile. Thus, if you are at Our Lady of Solitude Monastery, 9020 N 381st Ave, Tonopah, Arizona, you are 9020/800=11.275 miles north and 38100/800=47.625 miles west of Maricopa County's zero point of Washington St. and Central Ave., Phoenix. - Folks in New England will think that utterly bonkers, since as in the UK their house numbers rarely exceed a couple hundred, probably because streets there curve so much nobody could follow them that far.

[@wmlindley]

(The distances are approximate, because for historical reasons the first few miles in Phoenix had varying numbers of blocks per mile: the 'zero east/west' mile runs from 7th Avenue to 7th Street, thus one block is 1/14 mile; on the north-south axis, the first few miles north of zero might be 8, 14, or 10 blocks per mile.)

[@Paidraig]

Are those blocks square? The ones in the southeast tend to be rectangular (e.g. in Miami you have 16 to a mile in the north/south direction but only 10 to a mile in the east/west)

[@iroll]

@@Paidraig Yes. A lot of cities outside of the 13 original colonies and Texas (because Texas) are laid out on the PLSS (public land survey system) grid, which makes square blocks logical. This is especially true for cities laid out after the 1850s or so. Phoenix is a classic case, with almost the entire metro region having 8 streets to a mile (half section, quarter section, and quarter-quarter-section lines). So yeah, like @wmlindley said, you can calculate east/west distances easily by dividing street number (for the east valley) or avenue number (for the west valley) by eight. North-south is harder because the streets are named, not numbered, so even though I lived there 25 years I would still have to think hard to do that one. Miami might not be on the grid because it's on the coast.

[@holger_p]

it took me a while to grasp, that's more like a geographical coordinate, measerung distances, when beeing consecutive numbers.

[@frostyw]

New Englander here. My street consists of six houses, and my house number is just 13. 😁 (The lowest house number is 3, and the highest is 17. No, they're not continguous - 3,7,8,12,13,16,17 - why do you ask.)

[@frankdeboer1347]

12:22 In Canada we call it x's and o's. In the Netherlands we used the word Milliard for the American billion.

"used"?

[@epender]

It would seem that they now live in Canada.

[@ramblingsofgabby]

It's similar in Canadian French. I've never heard milliard in English though.

[@FrostyShadowYT]

I think you meant to say we use the word miljard in the Netherlands.

[@frankdeboer1347]

@FrostyShadowYT You probably do, but since I haven't lived there for 45 plus years, I used to.

[@chrish6001]

I believe our address postal code in Canada is identical to Scotland, as is A1A 1A1. It can usually be input into a GPS to help find a location. It can get confusing filling out online forms as some allow you to put in a space and others don't.

[@toddverbeek5113]

The difference in house numbers reflects a difference in city planning: the UK didn't, but the US did. US house numbers are (roughly) X/Y coordinates, telling you how far it is from the north/south or east/west axis, rather than simply numbering buildings sequentially from one end of the street. In large urban areas and surrounding rural areas, 5-digit numbers are commonplace. City streets named with numbers are the same thing; there might not be a 17th Street, but 18th Street will be the same distance from 16th Street as 14th Street. (Different cities use different scales.) In the UK it's not unusual for a road to change street names where it changes direction or it crosses another road, and the numbers start over. But in the US the opposite routinely happens: Maple Street might stop when it reaches some obstacle such as a park or river, then continue on the other side (with the numbers continuing according to distance). Gaps of miles can separate Maple Street in one neighborhood with Maple Street in another then again in yet another, which have the same name simply because they line up on a map. For this reason it's very important to pay attention to direction indicators on street addresses: 4523 N Oak Avenue is nowhere near 4517 S Oak Avenue.

[@chlorineismyperfume]

Regarding the X/Y coordinate style system, where is the zero point of reference? That part is confusing. In Aust the numbering starts at the end of the street closest to the central business district, central post office (though outdated now). Streets coming off larger through roads are numbered the same.

[@lironl6782]

'Oh' is used quite a bit in the US, e.g. FM station frequencies like one-oh-two-point-seven.

[@sststr]

For 0, I use and hear 'oh" all the time. Zilch is uncommon, but zero, zip, zilch, nada is a saying, and nil and naught are used aplenty here. In sports you might commonly here 'goose egg', depending on the sport. We have numerous words for 0, we're very creative with it!

[@vincem3748]

Here in the USA during sporting events, we use "nothing" for 0

[@katietandy975]

​@@vincem3748agreed, I've definitely heard sportscasters give the score as "one nothing Red Sox" which means 1-0 with the Red Sox in the lead. I've never heard a sportscaster say "one zilch" (lol)

[@WilliamHostman]

ANd "love" in tennis...

[@WilliamHostman]

@@vincem3748 for 3-0 (as an exemplar) I've heard "three-zero," "three-nothing," "three nought," "three-nil," "three-zip," and "three-unanswered." All from announcers on NHL hockey games. And all but "nought" from rugby announcers.

[@sststr]

@@WilliamHostman Also for tennis, at least among the people I play with, a set score of 0 may be called a bagel. Double bagel is the worst :-(

[@JML6988]

We have the option to use the 24 hour format on our digital clocks. When it's 1900, we'd say it's "nineteen hundred" rather than "nineteen o'clock".

[@SuprousOxide]

I remember when for local calls you could skip dialing the area code. And for long distance calls within the same area code (i lived in an area code covering most of a fairly large state) you dial 1 + 7 digits. Then we got too many numbers for the second three digits to be a unique set from the area codes, and some areas got more than one area codes in the local area, so you always had to dial area code (and the distinction between local and long distance calls went away...)

[@VIRACYTV]

I work in a UPS Store and everything you said about numbers is true with the exception of saying “OH” for zero. I never, ever, ever hear anyone where I live say the word “zero” for 0. Only the word “OH” and it drives me bananas because that is a letter and not a number.

[@vincem3748]

I live in NJ so my ZIP code starts with a zero, which I say aloud as "zero" instead of "oh" Am I the only one who does this? lol

[@iroll]

@@vincem3748 I was going to say that, I think it's pretty common to say "zero" for first number and "oh" for others. Which is interesting.

[@stargazer7644]

Imagine your consternation if you had to use an old typewriter that didn't even have a one or zero key and you were forced to use oh and el.

[@raedwulf61]

I always say zero to differentiate from the letter. It often gives people pause.

[@horsepowerandtalk1033]

I say zero when talking to non-Americans.

[@FozzyBBear]

I confused the hell out of a local once by saying the time was "twenty to three". Her gears had to spin for several seconds to understand that meant "two forty", and she laughed when she got it.

[@nate8088]

I'll say "quarter til" or "twenty of" if it's before an obvious time. But I'm from the northeast US.

[@nate8088]

Though now that I think of it, I didn't grow up in a city, so you can generally tell what hour it is just by the sky and what's going on around you. Farmers.... etc.

[@WilliamHostman]

Was much more common before digital watches...

[@MarshallLevin]

25 or 6 to 4 🙂

[@RaineWilder]

@@MarshallLevin is that imprecise because it’s based on the sun and cows?

[@a3vus]

We also use "Ought" for 0 with firearm cartridges and shotshells, as in "double ought" (00) buck shot or "thirty ought six" (.30-06).

[@DavidDellsperger]

Us zip codes can be optionally more defined 5 numbers followed by 4 numbers, but they're typically not requited.

[@margaretkur8161]

A complete postal code in the US is composed of 9 digits (called ZIP+4). The last 4 digits are helpful when streets are North and South, East and West, or when you have similar named streets. Pine St, Pine Rd, Pine Ave, Dr, Pl, Blvd, etc. Where I live, my zip code is a shared one with another community across the river!

[@lorrainemoynehan6791]

whereas a post code in the UK is narrowed down to an average of 15 properties. With a name and a post code a letter can be delivered

[@musicandbooklover-p2o]

@@lorrainemoynehan6791 While the Eircode is literally unique to one property. So much better and easier to use, especially for delivery drivers (you don't need an address, you literally only need to give your Eircode) and emergency service vehicles.

[@doyowan]

I’m Canadian, not sure if it’s just me but I remember hearing for the first time British people spelling out phone numbers with “double-X” or “triple-X” when the number (X) was repeating. E.g 1-800 as “one-eight-double-o…” rather than “one-eight-hundred…”. Did anyone else noticed that?

[@simonbutterfield4860]

I would say here oh-800 which is fairly common in the UK.

[@robertszynal4745]

@@simonbutterfield4860 Actually, we'd usually say "treble" rather than "triple" when there are three. But, as Simon says, we do say hundred sometimes when it's 0s.

[@siramea]

007

[@johnps1670]

In the Netherlands we use the week numbers for things like making appointments, uncommon for my English colleagues.

[@davegreenlaw5654]

Here in Canada we tend to use the AM and PM times, especially for television shows, except for Quebec, where they will use the military time style.