THE FRANKIE HECTORING

Stop it. It was clever when Seven did it. You know, that 7 in place of the V. Se7en. Sure, someone thought about that.

But, come on now. 5ive? Numb3rs? Thir13en Ghosts? Do we have to have a digit in place of a letter on e7ery s1ngle w8rd n0w?

Television's Numb3rs is an especially poor example. I mean, the show's called Numbers. Not Number. So they really should have put at least two digits in there to make that one work. Like Numb3r5 or maybe 2umb3r5, something like that. Otherwise, it's, like "Numb Three Rs". Who's numbing three Rs? What's an R? Is that street jive? Do they talk about the R down in the 'hood?

Pop band 5ive make a compelling argument for stopping the practice. They had that 5 at the start, but there's also the IV in the middle of the word "five", which is four in roman numerals. That's very confusing, especially to time travelling Romans (note - their time machine is designed to look like a freakishly large wooden horse).

It's high time someone reversed this trend. We should start writing the numbers with letters placed at odd angles within them like the result of a brutal car accident between the alphabet and the numerals. Together we can change the world.

This has, incidentally, been the 150th edition of Krusty. Or, as I prefer to think of it - Krusty ISO. D'you see what I've done there?