It all started quite simply, really. I was just watching some old documentary, I think, maybe about explorers or something. And I saw someone keeping track of supplies, making these marks on a piece of wood. But they didn’t look quite like the tally marks I always used – you know, the four vertical lines and then one diagonally through them for five.
That got me curious. Just a little niggle in the back of my head. So, I started paying more attention. When I was out, maybe at a market, or even just doodling, I tried to remember that different style I saw. I began looking closer at photos, especially older ones or ones from different countries I found browsing online or in books I have.
My Little Tally Hunt
I decided to actually track this stuff down, make a little project out of it. Pulled out an old notebook. Whenever I stumbled across a different way of marking counts, I’d sketch it down. Didn’t take long to realize there wasn’t just one other way, there were quite a few.
- The basic one: then slash through = 5. That’s what I grew up with. Simple, fast.
- The gate: then a horizontal line connecting the tops, sometimes another connecting the bottoms, making a sort of box or gate. Saw this pop up in contexts that seemed European.
- Dots: Found some references, maybe more for specific games or something, using dots arranged in patterns, like on dice.
- The Character ‘Zheng’: This one was really interesting. From Asia, specifically China I learned later. They use the character 正. It has exactly five strokes. So for each count, you add a stroke until the character is complete. That felt quite elegant when I saw it written out.
Trying Them Out Myself
Okay, seeing them is one thing, but I wanted to know how they felt to use. So, for a few days, I ditched my usual tally method. I started tracking my daily cups of coffee using the ‘gate’ or ‘box’ method. Felt a bit clunky at first, drawing those connecting lines. Maybe a bit slower than the quick diagonal slash.
Then I tried the 正 character method. Got a pen and paper and used it to count bird species I saw in the garden. It’s neat, looks tidy on the page. Each character is a block of five. But yeah, definitely slower for quick counting during, say, a busy inventory check. You have to be more deliberate with each stroke.
I even tried just simple groups of five vertical lines: . Honestly, that felt the easiest to make mistakes with. Harder to see the groups of five quickly compared to the slashed or boxed ones.
Why All the Different Ways?
It got me thinking. Why not just one universal way? Seems simple enough, just counting. But I guess it’s like anything people do – tools, language, whatever. Things develop differently based on materials, habits, maybe just random chance sometimes.
Maybe the slash was easy with chalk or carving. Maybe the character method worked well with traditional brushes and paper in China. Maybe the box felt more contained, less likely to smudge or be misread in certain situations. I don’t know for sure, just my own guesses from trying them.
What struck me was how this simple task – counting small numbers – had these different little cultural fingerprints all over it. You don’t often think about stuff like tally marks having a ‘style’ or ‘origin’, but they do.
So yeah, that was my little dive into tally marks. Didn’t discover anything earth-shattering. But it was a nice reminder that even the smallest, most everyday things can have a history and variation across the world. Makes you look at a simple scratch on a wall a bit differently.
