As a child I learned this awkward way to do tallies: | | | | | | | | | | | | | |/ | | | | | | | | | | | | | / | | | | | | | | | | | | | / | | | | | | | | | | | | | / | | | | | | | | | | | | | /| | | | The problems are (1) it's easy to mis-count the closely spaced vertical bars and thereby put the cross at only 4 or at 6 and not notice the mistake, (2) it takes up more physical space than necessary, (3) different counts are different sizes so it's hard to make columns line up, (4) groups tend to run together if too close together causing problem#1 to occur very often, and looking back at the mess you can't figure out where one group was supposed to end and the next to start, likewise (5) cross-bars sometimes miss some lines or extend too far and catch other lines making problem#1 still worse. I, Robert Elton Maas, while I was in high school, invented a better tally system which solves all those problems: | | | | /-+-\ | | | / \ | / X | X | | | / \ | / | \ | / | | -----+----- -----+----- -----+----- -----+----- | | / | / | \ | / | \ | | | / | / | \ X | X | | | | \-+-/ I.e. you make the first stroke just like the original, use the second to build a plus-sign, use the next two to turn it into octo-asterisk (the standard typewriter asterisk is hexagonal, but I find the octagonal one easier to draw even though it takes an extra stroke), and finally to complete the group you circle the asterisk. For example, compare the answer to everything expressed each way: