stroke (like a swash). In East Asian countries (Korea, China and Japan), this numeral is commonly written with such a serif, but no swash and no crossbar through the middle. It is usually written with just two strokes, the top horizontal and the (usually angled) vertical. A short horizontal bar is sometimes used to cross the vertical in the middle, to distinguish the seven from a numeral one, especially in cultures (such as French) that write 1 with a very long upstroke. This form is used commonly throughout continental Europe, parts of the United States and frequently in Australia. In Taiwan two horizontal bars are sometimes used, although an extra-long serif is the feature which most clearly distinguishes 7 from 1. When the cross is added in the center it can cause confusion with a script capital F. The numeral 8: Some people write this numeral like two circles. Other people write this numeral in one continuous motion, which makes it look like two tear drops or a sideways lemniscate. The numeral 9: In parts of Europe, this numeral is written with the vertical ending in a hook at the bottom. This version resembles how the lowercase g is commonly written (). Elsewhere the usual shape is to draw the vertical straight to the baseline. A nine may or may not appear with underlining or full stop (as 9 or 9.) in order to avoid confusion with 6. In China, southern Taiwan, and South Korea, the nine is sometimes written with the loop to the left of the stick, resembling a lowercase "q" with the loop on the cap line. The Latin writing system The lowercase letter a: This letter is often handwritten as the single-storey "ɑ" (a circle and a vertical line adjacent to the right of the circle) instead of the double-storey "a" found in many fonts. (See: A#Typographic variants) The lowercase letter g: In Polish, this letter is often rendered with a straight descender without a hook or loop. This effectively means that a handwritten g looks much like a q in other writing traditions. The letter q, which is only used in foreign words and is extremely rare, is then disambiguated from g by adding a serif (often undulated) extending to the right from the bottom tip of the descender. The lowercase letter p: The French way of writing this character has a half-way ascender as