Understanding Tally Marks

COUNTING USING TALLY MARKS

Tally marks are a quick way of keeping track of numbers in groups of five. One vertical line is made for each of the first four numbers; the fifth number is represented by a diagonal line across the previous four.

Tally marks are typically clustered in groups of five for legibility. The cluster size 5 has the advantages of (a) easy conversion into decimal for higher arithmetic operations and (b) avoiding error, as humans can far more easily correctly identify a cluster of 5 than one of 10.


Tally marks used in most of Europe, Turkey, Zimbabwe, Australia, New Zealand and North America.

In some variants, the diagonal/horizontal slash is used on its own when five or more units are added at once.

Cultures using Chinese characters tally by forming the character 正, which consists of five strokes

Tally marks used in France, Spain, South America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Venezuelaand Uruguay, among others) and French-speaking Africa. In Spanish countries, these are most commonly used for registering scores in card games, like Truco

In the dot and line (or dot-dash) tally, dots represent counts from 1 to 4, lines 5 to 8, and diagonal lines 9 and 10. This method is commonly used in forestry and related fields.^[6]

Brahmi numerals (lower row) in India in the 1st century CE

The oldest tally sticks date to between 35,000 and 25,000 years ago, in the form of notched bones found in the context of the European Aurignacian to Gravettian and in Africa's Late Stone Age.

The so-called Wolf bone is a prehistoric artifact discovered in 1937 in Czechoslovakia during excavations at Vestonice, Moravia, led by Karl Absolon. Dated to the Aurignacian, approximately 30,000 years ago, the bone is marked with 55 marks which may be tally marks. The head of an ivory Venus figurine was excavated close to the bone.

Various ways to cluster the number 8. The first or fifth mark in each group may be written at an angle to the others for easier distinction. In the fourth example, the fifth stroke "closes out" a group of five, forming a "herringbone". In the fifth row (used in Brazil, France, and the United States) the fifth mark crosses diagonally, forming a "five-bar gate"