How many write 'number fours' resembling 'number '9s?'

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To avoid confusing 'number fours' with 'number 9s', it's best to write 'number fours' like an upside-down lower-case 'h.'

How many quickly got out of the habit of writing 'number fours' as 'number 4s?'

When I play Sudoku I try to make my numbers look like the printed "clues" I have started writing 8s as two circles - my usual hand writing is more like making a - um - figure eight . . . like a capital S but keep going.

When I am writing passwords I make the ones with a pointy roof and a big wide foot, and the capital i as a kind of H turned on its side, while lower case L is a sort of script loopy thing. But for Suduko the book usually uses a one with a little pointy barb on the top and no foot - so I imitate that.

9 can have a more curvy bottom while 4 always has a straight up and down back - but some kinds of hand written 9's have that too. I remember when I was a kid one teacher put a line across every 7 "to make it look different from a 1" - this seemed odd to me because my 7's and 1's never looked at all alike. But now I often cross my 7's.

The one that drove me crazy when I was a kid was 5's and 7's turning into each other. When I write a 5 I start with the top bar which goes from right to left. When I wright a 7 I start with the top bar which goes from left to right. somehow I would mix up left and right, and then after the top bar the "automatic pilot" would kick in and finish the letter - or digit. I would get things marked wrong on my math tests - which infuriated me - i did the math correctly! It was just the 7 turned into a 5! The rest was correct! I knew the math - it was just the 7 and 5 thing (or 5 and 7 thing) and that certainly was NOT math.

By the time I got to college - it still happened but it was just embarrassing.

I never wrote 4s like how they show up on phones/computers for that very reason. I have coordination issues, and my letters and numbers are barely readable as is, I don't need the added difficulty of trying to make 4 distinguishable from 9 when I can just write it a different way. I never write 1s like how they show up on a phone/computer either, because then my 7s also just look the same.

I do 4s like an upside down h, because the other sort of 4 can be mistaken for a 9 sometimes.

Why is there 2 ways of writing a 4 anyway?

Not me.

At first grade, my 1 was mistaken for 7. And that was the worst of it for me.

How I write my 4 changed when I had attempted to change my penmanship a bit. Now, after about 20+ years, it just became a habit -- my 4 is no longer a closed 4 with a sharp end, but an upside-down 'h'.

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I write like the 4 shows here.

Can't give a "why" but in writing one just now I noticed that it was done in one continuous flow: bottom of vertical to top of vertical, angle down, crossbar.
There isn't a right-handed person available at the moment to see if they use a different flow.

Also can't tell whether I've always done it that way.

Do wonder if it may have something to do with how fast my hands start hurting any more when hand writing.
Tried writing a few open top 4s just now and it was physically uncomfortable.

My 4s have steeply angled backs, but don't connect at the top. I also got into the habit of crossing my 7s, French style, to make absolutely certain they can't be mistaken for 1s.

It is funny how everyone assumes that the way the 4 displays on their screen is also the way it displays on everyone else's screen. Fonts can be configured to appear differently on different OS and browsers.

I always thought the 4 with the triangle on top was just the same "upside down h" four with the left-top bar a bit tilted over.

I make my 9's with the top circles first then the down line. I make my fours "top-left, crossbar, flagpole". I am right handed but kind of ambidextrous. I can write with both hands and use scissors with both hands. Since no-one ever wanted the "green handled" left-handed scissors in second grade I usually took those. But i used them with my right hand (there is a trick to it). I use the same trick when trimming my nails now.

Often I am writing on a computer. The "7 turns into a 5" thing hardly ever happens with a keyboard. I use a "Palm OS" device (a Treo 650) - old but it still works. I like it better than my iPhone. It uses "gesturing" which is kind of like block-printing but simplified. The "4" is the same as the "L" - if I make it on the right side of the screen it becomes a 4, if I make it on the left side of the screen it becomes a lowercase "L" - in the middle it becomes a capital "L". Nine is the same as my handwriting. On the old "Palm III" there was a stroke you could make before the "L" to make it a 4. I thought the Palm III was easier to use. The Gesturing was called "Graffiti"
 ●  Wikipedia - Graffiti (Palm OS)
. . . then Microsoft got Xerox to sue Palm and they had to switch to "Graffiti II" which was worse. Then they switched to a "Blackberry" stile keyboard, but there was a hack to re-enable the original "Graffiti" which was still in the OS but hidden. Which is what I use on the Treo 650. I installed "mazec" (From MetaMoji) on my iPhone so it can do (sort of) handwriting recognition - but I don't like it as much as Graffiti. I mostly use the standard (annoying) iPhone on-screen-keyboard which was developed for the original iPod music player. I just tested "mazec" and it recognizes all the variations we have discussed for 7 8 9 and 1 and 4. For a while I used Palm OS Graffiti so much that when I tried to write on a white board the Palm Grafitti gestured came out instead of my usual block printing - my co-workers looked at me kind of strange.

My handwriting looks much better on the Palm Treo than in Real Life.

It is really annoying to get so used to "helping" technology that it becomes internalized then market pressures obsolete it on you.

I didn't know there were two ways of writing the number 4, or that it could resemble a '9'. Some people have commented that the way I write the number 5 looks almost identical to the letter 'S'.

I've noticed also that when you're entering the authentication code for a video game or a Windows operating system, you have to be very careful not to enter an '8' for a 'B' or a 'O' for a 'D', and vice versa.

I have very bad fine motor skills, a tremor disorder that can act up when doing things with fine motor-skills, dyslexlia, & dyscalcula & dysgraphia but the ladder two are considered part of my dyslexia. I've always had extremely messy handwriting & it's worse now that I've been out of school almost 22 years. I have to be very careful when writing letters or numbers in order to be able to read what I've wrote. There's times when I thought I had written a 4 & it was not a 4, 9 or even the letter A I avoid writing whenever I can unless I have to sign my name & date & I really try to write the date decently.

The number '0' and letter 'O' are ripe for confusion.

Zeros '0s' are best written with either a horizontal line, or a diagonal line through the number.

When speaking numbers, it's best to call '0' as zero - instead of calling zero as the letter 'O.'