Font where O is very distinct from zero

Question

I'm working on a project that has a a convoluted acronym with an O in it. In addition to being difficult to remember, it's very easy to mistake the O for a zero since it's not a word and it already has a number in it. (Example: F4TYO -- a reader who has never encountered this and doesn't know what it stands for may think that O is a 0)

Since I don't have control over the name, I want to try using a font that will make the O look very much like an O and not a zero.

Most fonts I've seen seem to focus on making the zero distinct (e.g. a slash, a dot, or boxy curves). I'm looking for a font where O is really distinct instead and very clearly an O and not a zero, even if it's mixed in with numbers.

I need to use a free font (Google fonts are OK). Suggests for non-free fonts would be welcome too though as they may lead me to ideas that point me in the right direction. Other ideas for designing around this problem would be welcome.

Edit: Another way to phrase this question as Sebastian mentions in the comments is "How would one even differentiate an O from a 0 in the absence of the latter"

Answer 1

Some visual clues that will tell your users the O is a letter:

1. If the O has thicker sides than the top and bottom.
2. If the 4 is an old-style numeral that sits below the baseline.
3. If the O is much wider than the number 4.

One free font I found that has all 3 is Goudy Bookletter 1911:

If that font looks too old-fashioned or unprofessional, you can either render some characters in one font and some in another, or you can pick a font that uses only 2 of the 3 clues, such as Actor.

Answer 2

My suggestion would be to make the number distinct from the letters instead of worrying about the O itself; maybe a different colour or size.

Thereby implying that anything else is a letter.

Answer 3

Assuming this is meant for use as a logo, where you have a bit more leeway in tools at your disposal, I'd suggest focusing on contrast between the number character and the letter characters. This could include:

• different fonts (ie. Helvetica v. Bodoni)
• different colors
• different scale
• different weights (ie. light v. bold)
• different styles (ie. italics v. book)
• etc.

Or any combination of the above.

Quick examples. The top is using different fonts and the bottom different colors:

The goal here is to make the 'O' clearly belong to the rest of the letters in the word leaving the actual number the odd-one out.

Answer 4

As @Sebastian rightly rephrased, "How would one even differentiate an O from a 0 in the absence of the latter? I don't think there's a convention for that."

You are asking for ideas to get around your problem. I propose that you work it out via the width of the characters: You have got F4TYO, i.e. four letters and one digit. So search for fonts where the digits (numbers) are obviously more narrow than the (capital) letters. That way the 4 is indirectly telling your readers that the O is not a 0 but a capital letter. If you cannot find much distinction in width, my second choice would be stroke-width (but any quality font would hardly have a noticable difference between letters and digits).

I need to get going, so will not do your homework. Once you have decided what you are looking for, I am confident that you will find a suitable font with that feature. Since style of digits is not normally tagged, you will probably need to look through many examples on your typeface-provider of preference, sorry. Please write an update and let us know how you solved it finally.

Since this intruiged me, I took time for one example, there must be better but I only serched for a few minutes:

So, seeing only the O will not tell much, but next to the 4, I believe that it feels owie.

(And I hate it when other users do it to my questions, but I just cannot resist for this question: "What you want is bad." - At least it is not your fault; but even the fact that you are having this problem means that the acronym sucks altogether. Normally customers should be able to figure out what it means - and then the question would not even post itself. So if they cannot know what it means, maybe it is less important whether that is a digit or a letter (and nobody will want to pronounce it anyway). My condolences, and please take this last paragraph not too seriously.)

Answer 5

I don't think there's really any unambiguous and widely established way to indicate that "this is a capital letter O, not a zero." The closest I can think of is that, in most fonts, all numbers tend to have the same width (so that they'll line up nicely), and thus a zero tends to be narrower than it's tall (unless it's a lowercase zero, that is).

So you could look for a font where the letter O is much wider than other letters, maybe even a perfect geometric circle. Such perfectly circular O's are often found e.g. in "geometric sans" fonts inspired by the art deco and Bauhaus design styles of the early 20th century, of which the most well known one nowadays is probably Futura. For example, here's your example text "F4TYO" rendered in URW Futura No 2 D Book:

and in Monotype Century Gothic Std Regular:

You could further emphasize the roundness of the O by picking a font where most other letters are particularly narrow. For example, here's the same text in ITC Plaza Std:

and Mecanorma Organda MN:

Unfortunately I can't recommend any good free alternatives off the top of my head, although I'm sure they exist. However, if this is just for a single logotype, you could always just take any reasonably geometric looking free sans-serif font that you like, and redraw the O yourself. After all, a perfect circle is among the simplest possible shapes to draw.

Answer 6

There are some fonts that use "old style figures", and so have a displacement between the positioning of uppercase alpha and numeric characters, e.g. IM FELL French Canon Font

Personally, I don't like this much, and I prefer Digital's answer.

Answer 7

(Since you're looking for a font, this doesn't directly answer your question, but this suggestion is too long for a comment. =) )

Perhaps there are some alternative approaches that you could use:

• Use lowercase letters. f4tyo. Clearly the last character is a lowercase o and not a zero. Based on current website naming trends, apparently there are some people who think that using all-lowercase names is hip or cool. Acronyms do not necessarily need to be in all-uppercase (e.g. people usually do not capitalize scuba, laser, or radar in modern usage). Note that doing so might introduce ambiguity between 1 (one) and l (lowercase L), but perhaps you could selectively use lowercase only for some letters.

• Use diacritics. F4TYÖ. Who cares if the diacritical mark is meaningless there? Heavy metal bands didn't care. Or use an accent mark (F4YTÓ) and pronounce it with, say, a Spanish accent.

Answer 8

We've had a couple of examples with a circular "O", but so far no suggestion of a rather square "O". To me this stands out quite clearly. The example here is Fetamont (based on the metafont logo)

One rather clichéd way to make numbers stand out is subscript (pseudo-chemistry) or superscript. This may or may not work in your context. The former would look something like F₄TYO.