<story><title>History of the broken vertical bar, being the ¦ form of |</title><url>https://www.reddit.com/r/typography/comments/aqcesg/history_of_the_broken_vertical_bar_being_the_form/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ncmncm</author><text>For anybody who has used a Vt52, H19, or similar terminal, there is no mystery. Before we had bitmap graphics, we had fill-in forms with ASCII graphics. A vertical line made with solid bars looked uneven, but the gap in the bar was the same height as the gap between a bar and the one above or below it, so it made a pleasing vertical dashed line to match the horizontal lines of actual hyphens and equal signs.&lt;p&gt;Nowadays, of course, if you want a line, you draw a line, so the gap no longer has a purpose.</text></comment>
<story><title>History of the broken vertical bar, being the ¦ form of |</title><url>https://www.reddit.com/r/typography/comments/aqcesg/history_of_the_broken_vertical_bar_being_the_form/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>WalterBright</author><text>I always hated the Windows product key font which you&amp;#x27;d have to type in to register Windows. The B looked like 8 and the D looked like O.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;d have to break out a magnifying glass to figure it out.&lt;p&gt;That font seems to be popular for serial numbers and any other use case where the user has to type in a series of characters.&lt;p&gt;I call it the IH8USRS font.</text></comment>