Are you sure about "nobody"? As a corollary, I've only ever used × to indicate the cross product of two vectors. For scalar multiplication, ⋅ is the standard symbol in my country (and many others).

I guess I'm being called out for not handwriting a lot myself anymore either. Yes, I'd use the centered dot too. Anyway, the point is that the asterisk is not what we use in handwriting.

Depends on the country. In Poland it's usually nothing for multiplication:

    (x+3)(10-y)

then dot, then asterisk. Nobody writes "x" for scalar multiplication cause it's easy to mistake it for the variable x. What do you mean by 2xy? 2 * y or 2 * x * y?

Another cultural difference is how 7 and 1 is written - in USA you write 7 with 2 strokes and 1 with 1 stroke. In my country 7 is always crossed (always has 3 strokes) and 1 has 2 strokes.

And variable z is usually crossed in equations to distinguish it from 2 (but that varies regionally).

In this case, most people will write the variable x with curved ends (𝑥) and the operator with straight ends.

That was how I learned to notate multiplication in high school or earlier. It’s how it’s done in all the mathematical literature or textbooks I’ve ever seen. And people only started using * when they started programming computers.

You might be surprised then that we don't even use . as a decimal point :)

I write asterisk like that. :) But middle dot "·" works as well. Problem with "×" is that it is basically letter "x". This ambiguity applies to more characters, just a simple example – a lot of Americans write "1", "l", "I", "|" as one symbol. This is fine when you have context, e.g. a phone number, but programming language is a mixed bag where context isn't much of a help.

You don't write letter x in handwriting. You always write cursive/italic x that cleanly solves the ambiguity with × sign. Similarly, "l" is handwritten and | is "broken" in the center.

Even though I am not German, I am aiming for Grundschrift [0] with letters and numbers since it is a close match for how I am writing. The broken pipe makes sense though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grundschrift

In my handwriting, I always write x as the typed letter. The cursive variant feels very awkward for me. In my country, after primary school, we always use a dot for multiplication (or,in maths with single-letter identifiers, no symbol at all - a multiplied by b is 'ab').

At least in some European countries we use a dot instead (which doesn't look like a variable named "x").

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot_operator#Notation_and_term...

Actually using asterisks for multiplications is something you do on computers not when writing on paper, or at least this is how I was taught at school and university

We don’t use any operator, since the parentheses are there. If we’re feeling nervous, maybe a centered dot.