Tally marks

In Europe and the United States, tally marks are written as groups of five lines. The first four lines are vertical, and the fifth line runs diagonally across the first four.

Chinese, Korean and Japanese tally marks use the five strokes of 正.

Notched sticks, known as tally sticks also were used for this purpose. The burning of discarded tally sticks resulted in the Burning of Parliament.

and the United States