Tally marks

Tally marks, also called hash marks, are a form of numeral used for counting. They can be thought of as a unary numeral system.

They are most useful in counting or tallying ongoing results, such as the score in a game or sport, as no intermediate results need to be erased or discarded. However, because of the length of large numbers, tallies are not commonly used for static text. Notched sticks, known as tally sticks, were also historically used for this purpose.