TIL the square root symbol we use is two symbols put in one 😱

This is the norm in Germany. Never saw anything else (model year '73 here).

Thank you Howie - not only for the history lesson but for the hook idea that should be more frequently used.

I’ve been doing that for years.

I write it with the hook all the time, and explained to 25 years of students why I did that (your reason). And I know a few are now math teachers themselves...

same here. My Diff Eqn Professor use the hook.

The 'hook' is a brilliant idea!

More to it: the little jaggy thing at the left indicates which root it is. If it is other than a square root, there are more zigzags in the jaggy thing. But at least two different dialects developed around this jaggy notation. It was eventually abandoned in favor of the root index we use today, where it sits over the jaggy thing. I like your little hook at the end of the vinculum. An even better adaptation is to treat the radical sign as an operator. If written as a unary operator, a complicated (right) operand is enclosed in parentheses. If it is written as a binary operator, the left operand is the root index, which can also be parenthesized. The problem here is the contradiction with traditional notation, in which a√b means a∗√b, not the a root of b. One can easily get used to this. Yes, we all can typeset math now. All we have to do is learn LaTeX, which is no small thing. Or we can take hints from programming languages and bring into common usage a more useful notation requiring only simple characters written in a line. If you want to see an example, get DragginMath from the Apple App Store. Happy to Zoom with you or anyone on this topic.

Will I see you in Minnesota in a couple weeks?