People in the United States have slightly different ways of writing certain numbers on paper than do people elsewhere in the world, namely Europe. However, no matter how it is physically written on paper, the number 1 is still pronounced one in the United States.
Apparently this is not the case for the number 0.
A popular news radio station in my metropolitan area has been recently running an advertisement where the announcer clearly states (and repeats!) the last four digits of the telephone number for the business: double-oh eleven. The fact that he states the last two digits as eleven instead of one one is annoying enough (that will have to be a future blog post), but is it really too much to ask to throw in the first extra syllable for the number zero? The announcer is dictating the phone number to the listener, and should the listener want to take note of the phone number, it would be easier for the listener to follow zero zero one one instead of double-oh eleven.
Take, for example, a vehicle license plate. If you witnessed a crime, and a vehicle was involved, you would need to tell the police the identification of the license plate. If you tell them that the identification number consisted of "one oh zee", they would likely ask you if you could tell whether or not it was the letter O or the number 0. There is a difference!
"Oh" is not a number; "zero" is a number.
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