The “crossed sevens” could mean the writer went to school in Europe. They didn’t learn that in a Florida school, and high schoolers probably wouldn’t feint that.
They cross the 7 (to distinguish it from a 1) in many places; actually, a lot of people in New York do it, probably because of the influence of so many 7-crossing foreigners. I myself cross my 7’s because I travel to places where they do it, and it makes one’s numbers clearer to them. Reading foreign numbers can be difficult!
That said, someone I know here (in Florida) got an e-mail death-threat from somebody who called himself “Ali the Assassin” and closed his threat-letter with “ALLAH IS MERCIFUL.” She thinks it was just spam, and not personal, because she was supposed to get in touch with an e-mail address in the UK (presumably to send money to buy off the “assassin”). Needless to say, she sent it to the FBI. But there are no doubt other people who received it and were terrified by it - anybody here get one or know anybody who did?
I cross mine - was taught to do it in computer programming classes so there wouldn't be mistakes interpreting hand-written notes.
Actually, Europeans tend to cross sevens. In fact, in the United States, Amateur radio operators also cross their sevens and zeros, because when you’re copying morse code traffic (or even voice) it helps to differentiate between Oh and Zero. And a lot of people make a ONE that looks like a Seven.
The crossed sevens could mean they went to school in Europe or they just copied European writing. I cross my sevens and was born and raised in the U.S. No. I am nowhere near Florida and I have no reason to make bomb threats.
IIRC, part of instruction on filling out military paperwork (USMC in my case) included the admonition to cross a seven. First time I’d ever had to do that.
I thought the same thing. This is not a prank by some stupid kid. The type of dopey American deliquent who would be tempted to do a prank like that would not know fine details like the fact that some people cross their sevens. The fact that "jihad" was spelled inconsistently makes me think this person is not a native speaker of English.
I will go out on a limb and guess that since the person left out the vowel in the last syllable of jihad, writing "hd" instead of "had," it may be that the person is not a native speaker of any European language. I think it would be an odd mistake for a native speaker of almost any European language to write a syllable that does not have a vowel in it. I admit that I am probably reading too much in it.
Crossed sevens are also found in math classes.