North of the Mets-Willets Point stop of the No. 7 subway line and the Long Island Rail Road, there is a standard written language: When the second baseman, the shortstop and the first baseman combine for a double play at Citi Field, reporters in the press box and fans in the seats write “4-6-3” on their scorecards. If the next batter strikes out swinging, a “K” tells the story.

But on the south side of the tracks in Queens, when Novak Djokovic hits a backhand winner down the line at the United States Open to give himself break point, nearly every pen recording the event will write something different.

Henry Chadwick, a baseball writer, created a code for keeping score in baseball in the 1870s, and it has remained the basis of scorecards. Tennis has no such written system, so each reporter has a unique language of letters, shapes, dots and slashes.