Alphanumericals

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A black-headed gull ringed with an alphanumeric plastic ring that makes it easier to read from a distance. Skrattmas - (Larus ridibundus) - Ystad-2020.jpg
A black-headed gull ringed with an alphanumeric plastic ring that makes it easier to read from a distance.

Alphanumericals or alphanumeric characters are any collection of number characters and letters in a certain language. Sometimes such characters may be mistaken one for the other.

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Merriam-Webster suggests that the term "alphanumeric" may often additionally refer to other symbols, such as punctuation and mathematical symbols. [1]

In the POSIX/C [2] locale, there are either 36 (A–Z and 0–9, case insensitive) or 62 (A–Z, a–z and 0–9, case-sensitive) alphanumeric characters.

Subsets of alphanumeric used in human interfaces

When a string of mixed alphabets and numerals is presented for human interpretation, ambiguities arise. The most obvious is the similarity of the letters I, O and Q to the numbers 1 and 0. [3] Therefore, depending on the application, various subsets of the alphanumeric were adopted to avoid misinterpretation by humans.

In passenger aircraft, aircraft seat maps and seats were designated by row number followed by column letter. For wide bodied jets, the seats can be 10 across, labeled ABC-DEFG-HJK. The letter I is skipped to avoid mistaking it as row number 1. In vehicle identification numbers used by motor vehicle manufacturers, the letters I, O and Q are omitted for their similarity to 1 or 0.

Tiny embossed letters are used to label pins on an V.35/M34 electrical connector. The letters I, O, Q, S, and Z were dropped to ease eye strain with 1, 0, 5, 3,and 2. That subset is named the DEC Alphabet after the company that first used it.

For alphanumerics that are frequently handwritten, in addition to I and O, V is avoided because it looks like U in cursive, and Z for its similarity to 2.

See also

Related Research Articles

D, or d, is the fourth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is dee, plural dees.

K, or k, is the eleventh letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is kay, plural kays. The letter K usually represents the voiceless velar plosive.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">QWERTY</span> Keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets

QWERTY is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six keys on the top left letter row of the keyboard. The QWERTY design is based on a layout created for the Sholes and Glidden typewriter and sold to E. Remington and Sons in 1873. It became popular with the success of the Remington No. 2 of 1878, and remains in ubiquitous use.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Z</span> Last letter of the Latin alphabet

Z, or z, is the 26th and last letter of the Latin alphabet, as used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its usual names in English are zed and zee, with an occasional archaic variant izzard.

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Although people in many parts of the world share common alphabets and numeral systems, styles of handwritten letterforms vary between individuals, and sometimes also vary systematically between regions.

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Greek numerals, also known as Ionic, Ionian, Milesian, or Alexandrian numerals, are a system of writing numbers using the letters of the Greek alphabet. In modern Greece, they are still used for ordinal numbers and in contexts similar to those in which Roman numerals are still used in the Western world. For ordinary cardinal numbers, however, modern Greece uses Arabic numerals.

Omicron is the fifteenth letter of the Greek alphabet. This letter is derived from the Phoenician letter ayin: . In classical Greek, omicron represented the close-mid back rounded vowel IPA:[o] in contrast to omega which represented the open-mid back rounded vowel IPA:[ɔː] and the digraph ου which represented the long close-mid back rounded vowel IPA:[oː]. In modern Greek, both omicron and omega represent the mid back rounded vowel IPA:[o̞] or IPA:[ɔ̝]. Letters that arose from omicron include Roman O and Cyrillic O. The word literally means "little O" as opposed to "great O". In the system of Greek numerals, omicron has a value of 70.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">English alphabet</span> Latin-script alphabet consisting of 26 letters

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Alphabetical order is a system whereby character strings are placed in order based on the position of the characters in the conventional ordering of an alphabet. It is one of the methods of collation. In mathematics, a lexicographical order is the generalization of the alphabetical order to other data types, such as sequences of numbers or other ordered mathematical objects.

Base32 is the base-32 numeral system. It uses a set of 32 digits, each of which can be represented by 5 bits (25). One way to represent Base32 numbers in a human-readable way is by using a standard 32-character set, such as the twenty-two upper-case letters A–V and the digits 0-9. However, many other variations are used in different contexts.

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Unicode has a certain amount of duplication of characters. These are pairs of single Unicode code points that are canonically equivalent. The reason for this are compatibility issues with legacy systems.

C, or c, is the third letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is cee, plural cees.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mathematical operators and symbols in Unicode</span>

The Unicode Standard encodes almost all standard characters used in mathematics. Unicode Technical Report #25 provides comprehensive information about the character repertoire, their properties, and guidelines for implementation. Mathematical operators and symbols are in multiple Unicode blocks. Some of these blocks are dedicated to, or primarily contain, mathematical characters while others are a mix of mathematical and non-mathematical characters. This article covers all Unicode characters with a derived property of "Math".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Keyboard layout</span> Arrangement of keys on a typographic keyboard

A keyboard layout is any specific physical, visual or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key-meaning associations (respectively) of a computer keyboard, mobile phone, or other computer-controlled typographic keyboard.

References

  1. "Alphanumeric". Merriam-Webster dictionary . Merriam-Webster . Retrieved 9 May 2020.
  2. Christias, Panagiotis (1 April 2004). "man ASCII(7), "American Standard Code for Information Interchange"". UNIXhelp. University of Edinburgh. Archived from the original on 11 May 2013. Retrieved 7 May 2013.
  3. Grissinger, Matthew (December 2012). "Avoiding Confusion With Alphanumeric Characters". Pharmacy and Therapeutics. 37 (12): 663–665. ISSN   1052-1372. PMC   3541865 . PMID   23319841.