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While watching anime, especially ones that focus on slice-of-life or high
school, I often come across a test paper containing a character's score.
However, it is interesting to note that the correct answers are **circled**
while the wrong ones are **ticked** (checked?). As far as I know, ticks are
for correct answers and circles are for incorrect answers (unless I've been
living in a shell, which would be embarrassing).

![Four Girls and an Idol](https://i.stack.imgur.com/sY3yZ.png)

The image is from The World God Only Knows OVA: Four Girls and an Idol, where
Keima Katsuragi intentionally placed an incorrect answer for question #1. As
you can see, it is checked while the rest are circled. Does this mirror how
Japan marks the test papers of students? If so, why?


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2014-12-27T10:41:49.570
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2018-10-24T16:57:20.993
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question
culture
Check and circle marks in test papers


Yes, this does mirror how Japan marks the test papers of students. Let's see
an example each of a marked test paper in anime and in real life Japan:

![Yui Hirasawa's abysmal math test score](https://i.stack.imgur.com/UyfAe.png)

![Sample of a graded arithmetic drill](https://i.stack.imgur.com/3b9LXm.jpg)

[Circles and crosses](http://jisho.org/word/%E3%80%87%C3%97) indicate right
and wrong answers, but you'll often see check marks used in place of crosses
to save time and effort. Check marks are sometimes called _reten_ for bearing
resemblance to the katakana _re_ , but should not be confused with the return
marker _[reten](http://jisho.org/word/%E3%83%AC%E7%82%B9)_ that
[annotate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanbun) Classical Chinese. Check
marks call forth the attention of students to incorrect answers, which they
should **_check_** again.

The check mark as an error mark also sees usage in countries like Korea and
Sweden, but as you can gather from the discussions on
[Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1f3ron/why_is_o_yes_an_x_no_in_japanese_playstation/)
and
[Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Check_mark#Ticks_in_various_cultures_.2F_Yes_vs._No),
there really is no _universal_ standard for marking right and wrong answers
even within a country. The graders may choose whatever the mark they want. My
teachers in school thought that ticking off wrong answers wastes too much ink,
so they just cheaply impressed a dot by the wrong answers.

Occasionally, you might also encounter the [flower
circle](http://jisho.org/word/%E8%8A%B1%E4%B8%B8), [double
circle](http://jisho.org/word/%E4%BA%8C%E9%87%8D%E4%B8%B8) and
[triangle](http://jisho.org/word/%E2%96%B3) marks, which denote, respectively,
perfect, good and average (poor) work done by the students.

![Hanamaru](https://i.stack.imgur.com/WanqHm.jpg)


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answer