In written languages, an ordinal indicator is a
character
Character or Characters may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Literature
* ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk
* ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...
, or group of characters, following a numeral denoting that it is an
ordinal number
In set theory, an ordinal number, or ordinal, is a generalization of ordinal numerals (first, second, th, etc.) aimed to extend enumeration to infinite sets.
A finite set can be enumerated by successively labeling each element with the least n ...
, rather than a
cardinal number. In
English orthography, this corresponds to the suffixes ''-st'', ''-nd'', ''-rd'', ''-th'' in written ordinals (represented either on the line ''1st'', ''2nd'', ''3rd'', ''4th'' or as superscript, ).
Also commonly encountered are the
superscript
A subscript or superscript is a character (such as a number or letter) that is set slightly below or above the normal line of type, respectively. It is usually smaller than the rest of the text. Subscripts appear at or below the baseline, whil ...
or
superior
Superior may refer to:
*Superior (hierarchy), something which is higher in a hierarchical structure of any kind
Places
*Superior (proposed U.S. state), an unsuccessful proposal for the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to form a separate state
*Lake ...
(and often underlined) masculine ordinal indicator, , and feminine ordinal indicator, , originally from
Romance and then via the cultural influence of
Italian, as in
1º ''
primo
Primo may refer to:
People
*DJ Premier (born 1966), hip-hop producer, sometimes goes by nickname Primo
*Primo Carnera (1906–1967), Italian boxer, World Heavyweight champion 1933–1934
*Primo Cassarino (born 1956), enforcer for the Gambino cri ...
'' and
1ª ''
prima''. In correct typography, the ordinal indicators and should be distinguishable from other characters.
The practice of underlined (or doubly underlined) superscripted abbreviations was common in 19th-century writing (not limited to ordinal indicators in particular, and also extant in the
numero sign
The numero sign or numero symbol, №, (also represented as Nº, No, No. or no.), is a Typography, typographic abbreviation of the word ''number''(''s'') indicating ordinal number, ordinal numeration, especially in names and titles. For exampl ...
), and was also found in handwritten English until at least the late 19th century (e.g. "first" abbreviated or ''1
'').
Usage
In
Spanish,
Portuguese,
Italian, and
Galician, the ordinal indicators and are appended to the numeral depending on whether the
grammatical gender is masculine or feminine. The indicator may be given an
underline but this is not ubiquitous. In
digital typography, this depends on the font:
Cambria and
Calibri
Calibri () is a digital sans-serif typeface family in the humanist or modern style. It was designed by Luc(as) de Groot in 2002–2004 and released to the general public in 2007, with Microsoft Office 2007 and Windows Vista. In Office 2007, it ...
, for example, have underlined ordinal indicators, while most other fonts do not.
Examples of the usage of ordinal indicators in Italian are:
*; ('first'),
*; ('second')
*; ('third')
Galician also forms its ordinal numbers this way, while
Asturian follows a similar system where is used for the masculine gender, for the feminine gender and for the neuter gender.
In Spanish, using the two final letters of the word as it is spelled is not allowed, except in the cases of (an
apocope
In phonology, apocope () is the loss (elision) of a word-final vowel. In a broader sense, it can refer to the loss of any final sound (including consonants) from a word.
Etymology
''Apocope'' comes from the Greek () from () "cutting off", from ...
of ) before singular masculine nouns, which is not abbreviated as but as , of (an apocope of ) before singular masculine nouns, which is not abbreviated as but as , and of compound ordinal numbers ending in "" or "". For instance, "twenty-first" is before a masculine noun, and its abbreviation is . Since none of these words are shortened before feminine nouns, their correct forms for those cases are and . These can be represented as and . As with other abbreviations in Spanish, the ordinal numbers have a period ".", which is placed ''before'' the indicator. Portuguese follows the same method.
Origins
The practice of indicating ordinals with superscript suffixes may originate with the practice of writing a superscript ''o'' to indicate a Latin ablative in pre-modern
scribal practice.
This ablative
desinence happened to be frequently combined with ordinal numerals indicating dates (as in ''tertio die'' (written ''iii
o die'') "on the third day" or in
Anno Domini years, as in (written or similarly) "in the thousandth
..year after the incarnation of our lord Jesus Christ").
The usage of terminals in the
vernacular languages of Europe derives from Latin usage, as practised by scribes in monasteries and
chanceries before writing in the vernacular became established. The terminal letters used depend on the gender of the item to be ordered and the case in which the ordinal adjective is stated, for example ("the first day", nominative case, masculine), but ("on the first day", ablative case masculine), shown as I
o or i
o. As monumental inscriptions often refer to days on which events happened, e.g. "he died on the tenth of June", the ablative case is generally used: X
o () with the month stated in the genitive case. Examples:
*I
o , "on the first day of July"
*X
o
*XX
o
*L
o
*C
o
*M
o
Design
The masculine ordinal indicator may be confused with the
degree sign
The degree symbol or degree sign, , is a typographical symbol that is used, among other things, to represent degrees of arc (e.g. in geographic coordinate systems), hours (in the medical field), degrees of temperature or alcohol proof. The sym ...
(U+00B0), which looks very similar and which is provided on the
Italian and
Latin American keyboard layouts. It was common in the early days of computers to use the same character for both. The degree sign is a uniform circle and is never underlined. The masculine ordinal indicator is the shape of a lower-case letter , and thus may be
oval or
elliptical
Elliptical may mean:
* having the shape of an ellipse, or more broadly, any oval shape
** in botany, having an elliptic leaf shape
** of aircraft wings, having an elliptical planform
* characterised by ellipsis (the omission of words), or by conc ...
, and may have a varying line thickness.
Ordinal indicators may also be underlined. It is not mandatory in Portugal nor in Brazil, but it is preferred in some fonts to avoid confusion with the degree sign.
Also, the ordinal indicators should be distinguishable from superscript characters. The top of the ordinal indicators (i.e., the top of the elevated letter and letter ) must be aligned
with the
cap height
In typography, cap height is the height of a capital letter above the baseline for a particular typeface.http://pfaedit.sourceforge.net/glossary.html Glossary of (some) Typographic Terms It specifically is the height of capital letters that are f ...
of the font. The alignment of the top of superscripted letters and will depend on the font.
The line thickness of the ordinal indicators is always proportional to the line thickness of the other characters of the font. Many fonts just shrink the characters (making them thinner) to draw superscripts.
Encoding
The Romance feminine and masculine ordinal indicators were adopted into
the 8-bit
ECMA-94 encoding in 1985 and the
ISO 8859-1
ISO/IEC 8859-1:1998, ''Information technology — 8-bit single-byte coded graphic character sets — Part 1: Latin alphabet No. 1'', is part of the ISO/IEC 8859 series of ASCII-based standard character encodings, first edition published in 1 ...
encoding in 1987 (both based on
DEC's
Multinational Character Set designed for
VT220
The VT220 is a computer terminal introduced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in November 1983. The VT240 added monochrome ReGIS vector graphics support to the base model, while the VT241 did the same in color. The 200 series replaced the s ...
), at positions 170 (xAA) and 186 (xBA), respectively.
ISO 8859-1 was incorporated as the first 256 code points of
ISO/IEC 10646 and
Unicode in 1991.
The Unicode characters are thus:
*
*
There are
superscript versions of the letters and in Unicode, these are different characters and should not be used as ordinal indicators.
The majority of character sets intended to support Galician, Portuguese and/or Spanish have those two characters encoded. In detail (in hexadecimal):
Typing
Portuguese and
Spanish keyboard layouts are the only ones on which the characters are directly accessible through a dedicated key: for "º" and for "ª". On other keyboard layouts these characters are accessible only through a set of keystrokes.
On
Windows can be obtained by and by .
In
MacOS keyboards, can be obtained by pressing and can be obtained by pressing .
In
Linux, can be obtained by or , and by or . On
ChromeOS, the same , facilities are included in the UK-Extended language setting but the Compose function requires a (Google) add-on to Chrome.
On many mobile devices keyboards (
tablets,
smartphones, etc.) and can be obtained by holding the keys and , respectively, and then selecting the desired character. For this option to appear, the selected input language may need to be changed to one where these symbols are used natively. For example, on Microsoft Swiftkey, both are available when 'Italian' is enabled, but not when only 'English' is.
Similar conventions
Some languages use
superior letters as a typographic convention for abbreviations. Oftentimes, the ordinal indicators and are used in this sense, and not to indicate ordinal numbers. Some might say that this is a misuse of ordinal indicators:
* Spanish uses superscript letters and ordinal indicators in some abbreviations, such as for ("approved"); for ("number"); for (an
honorific); for , a
Spanish name frequently used in compounds like ; and for , administrator. The superscript characters and indicators are always preceded by a period. Traditionally they have been underlined, but this is optional and less frequent today. Portuguese forms some abbreviations in the same manner. For example: for (an
honorific), for (
Ltd.
A private company limited by shares is a class of private limited company incorporated under the laws of England and Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland, certain Commonwealth countries, and the Republic of Ireland. It has shareholders with limit ...
), and for (
Ms.).
* English has borrowed the "No." abbreviation from the
Romance-language
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European languages, I ...
word ''numero'', which itself derives from the Latin word ''numero'', the
ablative case
In grammar, the ablative case (pronounced ; sometimes abbreviated ) is a grammatical case for nouns, pronouns, and adjectives in the grammars of various languages; it is sometimes used to express motion away from something, among other uses. T ...
of the word ''numerus'' ("number"). This is sometimes written as "N
o", with the superscript ''o'' optionally underlined, or sometimes with the ordinal indicator. In this case the ordinal indicator would simply represent the letter "o" in ''numero''; see
numero sign
The numero sign or numero symbol, №, (also represented as Nº, No, No. or no.), is a Typography, typographic abbreviation of the word ''number''(''s'') indicating ordinal number, ordinal numeration, especially in names and titles. For exampl ...
.
Ordinal dot
In
Basque,
Serbo-Croatian,
Czech,
Danish
Danish may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark
People
* A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark
* Culture of Denmark
* Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish ance ...
,
Estonian
Estonian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Estonia, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe
* Estonians, people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent
* Estonian language
* Estonian cuisine
* Estonian culture
See also ...
,
Faroese,
Finnish,
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
,
Hungarian,
Icelandic,
Latvian,
Norwegian,
Slovak,
Slovene,
Turkish
Turkish may refer to:
*a Turkic language spoken by the Turks
* of or about Turkey
** Turkish language
*** Turkish alphabet
** Turkish people, a Turkic ethnic group and nation
*** Turkish citizen, a citizen of Turkey
*** Turkish communities and mi ...
, among other languages, a period or
full stop
The full stop (Commonwealth English), period (North American English), or full point , is a punctuation mark. It is used for several purposes, most often to mark the end of a declarative sentence (as distinguished from a question or exclamation ...
is written after the numeral. In
Polish
Polish may refer to:
* Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe
* Polish language
* Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent
* Polish chicken
*Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...
the period can be omitted if there is no ambiguity whether a given numeral is ordinal or cardinal. The only exception are variables in mathematics ("k+1-szy" — "(k+1)st").
Writing out the
endings
End, END, Ending, or variation, may refer to:
End
*In mathematics:
**End (category theory)
**End (topology)
**End (graph theory)
** End (group theory) (a subcase of the previous)
**End (endomorphism)
*In sports and games
**End (gridiron football) ...
for various
cases, as sometimes happens in Czech and Slovak, is considered incorrect and uneducated. Should a
period or full stop follow this dot, it is omitted. In Czech and Slovak, numerals with ordinal dot are mostly used only in tables, lists etc., or in case of large (or long) numbers; within a sentence it is recommended to write out the form with letters in full.
The Serbian standard of Serbo-Croatian (unlike the Croatian and Bosnian standards) uses the dot in role of the ordinal indicator only past Arabic numerals, while Roman numerals are used without a dot.
There is a problem with autocorrection, mobile editors etc. which often forces a capital initial letter to the word following the ordinal number.
Other suffixes
English
* ''-st'' is used with numbers ending in ''1'' (e.g. ''1st'', pronounced ''first'')
* ''-nd'' is used with numbers ending in ''2'' (e.g. ''92nd'', pronounced ''ninety-second'')
* ''-rd'' is used with numbers ending in ''3'' (e.g. ''33rd'', pronounced ''thirty-third'')
* As an exception to the above rules, all the "teen" numbers ending with ''11'', ''12'', etc. use ''-th'' (e.g. ''11th'', pronounced ''eleventh'', ''112th'', pronounced ''one hundred
ndth'')
* ''-th'' is used for all other numbers (e.g. 9th, pronounced ''ninth'').
* One archaic variant uses a singular ''-d'' for numbers ending in 2 or 3 (e.g. ''92d'' or ''33d'')
In 19th-century handwriting, these terminals were often elevated, that is to say written as superscripts (e.g. ). With the gradual introduction of the
typewriter in the late 19th century, it became common to write them on the baseline in typewritten texts,
and this usage even became recommended in certain 20th-century style guides.
Thus, the 17th edition of ''
The Chicago Manual of Style'' states: "The letters in ordinal numbers should not appear as superscripts (e.g., 122nd not )", as do the ''
Bluebook''
and style guides by the ''
Council of Science Editors'',
Microsoft, and
Yahoo. Two problems are that superscripts are used "most often in citations" and are "tiny and hard to read".
Some
word processors format ordinal indicators as superscripts by default (e.g.
Microsoft Word). Style guide author Jack Lynch (
Rutgers) recommends turning off automatic superscripting of ordinals in
Microsoft Word, because "no professionally printed books use superscripts".
French
French
French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to France
** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents
** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
uses the ordinal indicators (), in feminine (), (). French also uses the indicator for the variant ; in feminine this indicator becomes : . In plural, all these indicators take a
S: (), (), (), (), ().
These indicators use superscript formatting whenever it is available.
Catalan
The rule in
Catalan
Catalan may refer to:
Catalonia
From, or related to Catalonia:
* Catalan language, a Romance language
* Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia
Places
* 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...
is to follow the number with the last letter in the singular and the last two letters in the plural. Most numbers follow the pattern exemplified by "20" ( '' '', '' '', '' '', '' ''), but the first few ordinals are irregular, affecting the abbreviations of the masculine forms. Superscripting is not standard.
Dutch
Unlike other
Germanic languages,
Dutch is similar to
English in this respect: the French layout with ' used to be popular, but
the recent spelling changes now prescribe the suffix . Optionally and may be used, but this is more complex: (), (), (), ()...
Finnish
In
Finnish orthography, when the numeral is followed by its
head
A head is the part of an organism which usually includes the ears, brain, forehead, cheeks, chin, eyes, nose, and mouth, each of which aid in various sensory functions such as sight, hearing, smell, and taste. Some very simple animals may ...
noun (which indicates the
grammatical case of the ordinal), it is sufficient to write a period or
full stop
The full stop (Commonwealth English), period (North American English), or full point , is a punctuation mark. It is used for several purposes, most often to mark the end of a declarative sentence (as distinguished from a question or exclamation ...
after the numeral: "In the competition, I finished in 2nd place". However, if the head noun is omitted, the ordinal indicator takes the form of a
morphological suffix, which is attached to the numeral with a
colon. In the
nominative case, the suffix is for 1 and 2, and for larger numerals: "I came 2nd, and my brother came 3rd". This is derived from the endings of the spelled-out ordinal numbers: , , '', '', , , ...
The system becomes rather complicated when the ordinal needs to be
inflected, as the ordinal suffix is adjusted according to the case ending: (nominative case, which has no ending), (
genitive case
In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...
with ending ), (
partitive case
The partitive case (abbreviated , , or more ambiguously ) is a grammatical case which denotes "partialness", "without result", or "without specific identity". It is also used in contexts where a subgroup is selected from a larger group, or with nu ...
with ending ), (
inessive case with ending ), (
illative case with ending ), etc. Even native speakers sometimes find it difficult to exactly identify the ordinal suffix, as its borders with the
word stem and the case ending may appear blurred. In such cases it may be preferable to write the ordinal word entirely with
letters and particularly is rare even in the nominative case, as it is not significantly shorter than the full word .
Irish
Numerals from ''3'' up form their ordinals uniformly by adding the suffix : , etc. When the ordinal is written out, the suffix adheres to the spelling restrictions imposed by the
broad/slender difference in consonants and is written after slender consonants; but when written as numbers, only the suffix itself () is written. In the case of ''4'' (), the final syllable is
syncopated
In music, syncopation is a variety of rhythms played together to make a piece of music, making part or all of a tune or piece of music off-beat. More simply, syncopation is "a disturbance or interruption of the regular flow of rhythm": a "place ...
before the suffix, and in the case of ''9'' (), ''20'' (), and ''1000'' (), the final vowel is assimilated into the suffix.
Most multiples of ten end in a vowel in their cardinal form and form their ordinal form by adding the suffix to their genitive singular form, which ends in ; this is not reflected in writing. Exceptions are ''20'' () and ''40'' (), both of whom form their ordinals by adding the suffix directly to the cardinal ( and ).
When counting objects (2) becomes and (4) becomes .
As in French, the vigesimal system is widely used, particularly in people's ages. – 95.
The numbers ''1'' () and ''2'' () both have two separate ordinals: one regularly formed by adding , and one
suppletive form (). The regular forms are restricted in their usage to actual numeric contexts, when counting. The latter are also used in counting, especially , but are used in broader, more abstract senses of 'first' and 'second' (or 'other'). In their broader senses, and are not written as and , though and may in a numeric context be read aloud as and (e.g., may be read as or as ).
Russian
One or two letters of the spelled-out numeral are appended to it (either after a hyphen or, rarely, in superscript). The rule is to take the minimal number of letters that include at least one consonant phoneme. Examples: 2-му второму , 2-я вторая , 2-й второй (note that in the second example the vowel letter я represents two phonemes, one of which () is ''consonant'').
Swedish
The general rule is that (for 1 and 2) or (for all other numbers, except , et cetera, but including and ) is appended to the numeral. The reason is that and respectively end the ordinal number words. The ordinals for 1 and 2 may however be given an form ( and instead of and ) when used about a male person (masculine natural gender), and if so they are written and . When indicating dates, suffixes are never used. Examples: (first grade (in elementary school)), (third edition), but . Furthermore, suffixes can be left out if the number obviously is an ordinal number, example: (3rd ed). Using a
full stop
The full stop (Commonwealth English), period (North American English), or full point , is a punctuation mark. It is used for several purposes, most often to mark the end of a declarative sentence (as distinguished from a question or exclamation ...
as an ordinal indicator is considered
archaic
Archaic is a period of time preceding a designated classical period, or something from an older period of time that is also not found or used currently:
*List of archaeological periods
**Archaic Sumerian language, spoken between 31st - 26th cent ...
, but still occurs in military contexts. Example: (5th company).
Representation as prefix
Numbers in
Malay
Malay may refer to:
Languages
* Malay language or Bahasa Melayu, a major Austronesian language spoken in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore
** History of the Malay language, the Malay language from the 4th to the 14th century
** Indonesi ...
and
Indonesian
Indonesian is anything of, from, or related to Indonesia, an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. It may refer to:
* Indonesians, citizens of Indonesia
** Native Indonesians, diverse groups of local inhabitants of the archipelago
** Indonesian ...
are preceded by the ordinal prefix ; for example, , "seventh". The exception is which means "first".
Numbers in
Filipino are preceded by the ordinal prefix or (the latter subject to
sandhi; for example, or , "seventh". The exception is , which means "first".
In
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
and
Japanese, an ordinal number is prefixed by / ; for example, "first", "second".
In
Korean, an ordinal number is prefixed by or suffixed by ; for example, "first", "second".
See also
*
Numero sign
The numero sign or numero symbol, №, (also represented as Nº, No, No. or no.), is a Typography, typographic abbreviation of the word ''number''(''s'') indicating ordinal number, ordinal numeration, especially in names and titles. For exampl ...
*
Superior letter
References
External links
* .
Windows keyboard layoutsApple keyboard layouts
{{navbox punctuation
Typographical symbols