Arabic numerals in its entry in the "Oxford English Dictionary", which helps to distinguish it from "Arabic numerals" as the Eastern Arabic numerals. Alternative names are Western Arabic numerals, Western numerals, Hindu–Arabic numerals and Unicode calls them digits. The decimal Hindu–Arabic numeral system with zero was developed in India by around AD 700. The development was gradual, spanning several centuries, but the decisive step was probably provided by Brahmagupta's formulation of zero as a number in AD 628. The system was revolutionary by including zero in positional notation, thereby limiting the number of individual digits to ten. It is considered an important
Japanese numerals , ). The Arabic numerals are more often used in horizontal writing, and the Chinese numerals are more common in vertical writing. Most numbers have two readings, one derived from Chinese used for cardinal numbers (On reading) and a native Japanese reading used somewhat less formally for numbers up to 10. In some cases (listed below) the Japanese reading is generally preferred for all uses. <nowiki>*</nowiki> The special reading 〇 "maru" (which means "round" or "circle") is also found. It may be optionally used when reading individual digits of a number one after another, instead of as a full number.