Nico: I haven't be able to find a page explaining why the goban coordinates jump from H to J, missing I. Shame on me! I suspect some kind of historical reason. And I am pretty sure that this is explained somewhere on a wiki page...
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Tamsin: It's to avoid confusion between "i" and "j" in game records using algebraic notation (i.e., co-ordinates written in letters and numbers).
I thought it was because "I" could be confused with "l" or "1".
Bill: Historically, Latin did not have both letters. I think some modern languages do not, either, but I'm not absolutely sure.
(moved from QuickQuestions)
jonathan:most grids skip "I" because "j" dosen't have a curve on the bottom and the two can be confused.
Bonobo: Forgive me for reviving this, but of course it is because of the possible ambiguity of
(In serif fonts, though, like the Times (New) Roman font that SL uses, these letters are relatively easy to distinguish, but not so in sans-serif fonts like Helvetica or Arial.)
And AFAIK it is also done this way in some field(s) of physics and/or mathematics, for the same reason.
But some Asian servers don’t skip the I, and I’d think they simply are not that familiar with Roman script to be aware of this possible cause for confusion.