7 (number) - Evolution of The Glyph

Evolution of The Glyph

In the beginning, various Hindus wrote 7 more or less in one stroke as a curve that looks like an uppercase J vertically inverted. The western Ghubar Arabs' main contribution was to make the longer line diagonal rather than straight, though they showed some tendencies to making the character more rectilinear. The eastern Arabs developed the character from a 6-look-alike into an uppercase V-look-alike. Both modern Arab forms influenced the European form, a two-stroke character consisting of a horizontal upper line joined at its right to a line going down to the bottom left corner, a line that is slightly curved in some font variants. As is the case with the European glyph, the Cham and Khmer glyph for 7 also evolved to look like their glyph for 1, though in a different way, so they were also concerned with making their 7 more different. For the Khmer this often involved adding a horizontal line above the glyph. This is analogous to the horizontal stroke through the middle that is sometimes used in handwriting in the Western world but which is almost never used in computer fonts. This horizontal stroke is, however, important to distinguish the glyph for seven from the glyph for one in writings that use a long upstroke in the glyph for 1.

On the seven-segment displays of pocket calculators and digital watches, 7 is the number with the most common glyph variation (0, 6 and 9 also have variant glyphs). Most calculators use three line segments, but on Sharp, Casio, and a few other brands of calculators, 7 is written with four line segments because, in Japan and Korea, 7 is written as ① in the illustration to the right.

While the shape of the 7 character has an ascender in most modern typefaces, in typefaces with text figures the character usually has a descender, as, for example, in .

Most people in Continental Europe and Latin America write 7 with a line in the middle ("7"), sometimes with the top line crooked. The line through the middle is useful to clearly differentiate the character from the number one, as these can appear similar when written in certain styles of handwriting. This glyph is used in official handwriting rules for primary school in Russia, Ukraine and other Slavic countries, as well as in France and Romania.