Ordinal indicator

In written languages, an ordinal indicator is a character, or group of characters, following a numeral denoting that it is an ordinal number, 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, 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, 4^th).

Also commonly encountered are the superscript (and often underlined) ordinal indicaters a and o, originally from Romance, but via the cultural influence of Italian by the 18th century widely used in the wider cultural sphere of Western Europe, as in 1º primo and 1ª prima "first, chief; prime quality".

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 №), and was also found in handwritten English until at least the late 19th century (e.g. "first" abbreviated 1^st or 1^st).^[1]

Superscript o and a

In Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, the suffixes ^o and ^a are appended to the numeral depending on whether the grammatical gender is masculine or feminine respectively. As with English and French orthographical tradition, the suffixes are traditionally superscripted. In addition, they are often underlined too, as in 1º primo, 1ª prima.

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 years of the Dionysian era, as in anno millensimo [...] ab incarnatione domini nostri Iesu Christi (written an ͂ X^o [...] dm ͂i nri ih ͂u xp ͂i 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 practiced by scribes in monasteries and chancelries 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 primus dies ("the first day", nominative case, masculine), but primo die ("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 (decimo) with the month stated in the genitive case. Examples:^[2]

• I^o ((primo) die Julii, "on the first day of July")
• X^o decimo
• XX^o vicensimo
• L^o quinquagensimo
• C^o centensimo
• M^o millensimo

Usage

In Galician, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish, the suffixes º and ª are appended to the numeral depending on whether the grammatical gender is masculine or feminine respectively. As with French, these signs are preferably superscripted but, in contrast, they are often underlined as well. For example, in Italian: primo 1^o and prima 1^a, secondo 2^o and seconda 2^a, terzo 3^o and terza 3^a…, and also the abbreviation n^o for numero. Some character sets provide characters specifically for use as ordinal indicators in these languages: º and ª (in Unicode U+00BA and U+00AA^[3]). The masculine ordinal indicator U+00BA (º) is often confused with the degree sign U+00B0 (°), which looks very similar in many fonts and is available on Italian and Spanish keyboard layouts. The degree sign is a uniform circle and is never underlined, while the letter o may be oval or elliptical and have a varying line thickness. The letter o may also be underlined.

In Spanish, using the two final letters of the word as it is spelled is not allowed,^[4] except in the cases of primer (an apocope of primero) before singular masculine nouns, which is not abbreviated as 1.^o but as 1.^er, of tercer (an apocope of tercero) before singular masculine nouns, which is not abbreviated as 3.^o but as 3.^er, and of compound ordinal numbers ending in "primer" or "tercer". For instance, "twenty-first" is vigésimo primer before a masculine noun, and its abbreviation is 21.^er. Since none of these words should be shortened before feminine nouns, their correct forms for those cases are primera and tercera. These can be represented as 1.^a and 3.^a. As with other abbreviations in Spanish, the ordinal numbers have a period ".", which is placed before the superscript letter(s).

Also in Portuguese, as with other abbreviations, the ordinal numbers have a period ".", which is placed before the ordinal indicator(s).^[5]

Encoding

The Romance feminine and masculine ordinal indicators were adopted into the 8-bit ISO 8859-1 encoding in 1985 (based on DEC's Multinational Character Set designed for VT220), 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:

• U+00AA ª FEMININE ORDINAL INDICATOR (HTML ª · ª)
• U+00BA º MASCULINE ORDINAL INDICATOR (HTML º · º)

The named html entities ª and º were introduced in HTML 3.2 (1996).

The majority of character sets intended to support Galician, Portuguese and/or Spanish have those two characters encoded. In detail (in hexadecimal):

Keyboard

IBM PC, Windows and Apple keyboards designed for Galician, Portuguese and Spanish have those characters directly accessible through a dedicated key. Although that key is not located in the same place in the Portuguese keyboard and the Spanish keyboard (which serves both Galician and Spanish languages), they use a similar method to access those characters: a simple key stroke of º to get “º” and ⇧ Shift, º to get “ª”. In the Brazilian Portuguese keyboard, “ª” and “º” can be obtained by pressing AltGr, [ and AltGr, ], respectively.

In Windows keyboards, optionally, “º” can be obtained by pressing Alt, 0, 1, 8, 6 (on the numeric keypad) and “ª” can be obtained by pressing Alt, 0, 1, 7, 0 (on the numeric keypad).

In Apple keyboards, optionally, “º” can be obtained by pressing Alt, 0 and “ª” can be obtained by pressing Alt, 9.

In Linux, “º” can be obtained by pressing AltGr, ⇧ Shift, M and “ª” can be obtained by pressing AltGr, ⇧ Shift, F.

Similar conventions

Some languages use superior letters as a typographic convention for abbreviations that aren't related to ordinal numbers – the letters o and a may be among those used, but they do not indicate ordinals:

• Spanish uses the indicator letters in some abbreviations, such as V.º B.º for visto bueno ("approved"); n.º for número, number; and M.ª for María, a Spanish name frequently used in compounds like José M.ª.
• In Portuguese, the underlined "º" and "ª" are used with many abbreviations, and should be preceded by a period. In fact, there is no limit for which words may be abbreviated this way. Sometimes, other letters are also written before the "º" or "ª". For example: Ex.^mo for Excelentíssimo (an honorific), L.^da for Limitada (Ltd.), Sr.^a for Senhora (Ms.), etc.
• English has borrowed the "No." abbreviation from the Romance languages word numero (according to the OED, the term is from the Latin numero, which is the ablative form of the word numerus ("number"). Similar forms exist as the word for "number" is derived in other Romance languages: numero in Italian, numéro in French, and número in Spanish and Portuguese), applying it as an abbreviation for the English word "number". This is sometimes written as "Nº", with the superscript o optionally underlined; see numero sign.

Use of the ordinal-indicating Unicode characters for these kinds of abbreviations is a matter of preference, but can be misleading; the "º" in "Nº", for example, is not intended to indicate ordinality at all.

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 or 13 use -th (e.g. 11th, pronounced eleventh, 112th, pronounced one hundred [and] twelfth)
• -th is used for all other numbers (e.g. 9th, pronounced ninth).

In 19th-century handwriting, these terminals were often elevated, that is to say written as superscripts (e.g. 2^nd, 34^th). With the gradual introduction of the typewriter in the late 19th century, it became common to write them on the line in typewritten texts,^[6] and this usage even became recommended in certain 20th-century style guides. Thus, the 16th edition of The Chicago Manual of Style states: "The letters in ordinal numbers should not appear as superscripts (e.g., 122nd not 122^nd)", as do the Bluebook^[7] and style guides by the Council of Science Editors,^[8] Microsoft,^[9] and Yahoo.^[10] Two problems are that superscripts are used "most often in citations" and are "tiny and hard to read".^[7] Some word processors format ordinal indicators as superscripts by default (e.g. Microsoft Word^[11]). Style guide author Jack Lynch (Rutgers) recommends turning off automatic superscripting of ordinals in Microsoft Word, because "no professionally printed books use superscripts".^[12]

French

French uses the ordinal indicators ^er (1^er – premier), ^re in feminine (1^re – première), ^e (2^e – deuxième). French also uses the indicator ^d for the variant 2^d – second ; in feminine this indicator becomes ^de : 2^de – seconde. In plural, all these indicators take a S : ^ers (1^ers – premiers), ^res (1^res – premières), ^es (2^es – deuxièmes), ^ds (2^ds – seconds), ^des (2^des – secondes). These indicators use superscript formatting whenever it is available.

Other languages

Catalan

The rule in Catalan is to follow the number with the last letter in the singular and the last two letters in the plural.^[13] Most numbers follow the pattern exemplified by vint "20" (20è m sg, 20a f sg, 20ns m pl, 20es f pl), 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 ^e used to be popular, but the recent spelling changes now prescribe the suffix ‑e. Optionally ‑ste and ‑de may be used, but this is more complex: 1ste (eerste), 2de (tweede), 4de (vierde), 20ste (twintigste)…^[14]

Finnish

In Finnish orthography, when the numeral is followed by its head noun (which indicates the grammatical case of the ordinal), it is sufficient to write a period or full stop after the numeral: Päädyin kilpailussa 2. sijalle "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 ‑nen for 1 and 2, and ‑s for larger numerals: Minä olin 2:nen, ja veljeni oli 3:s "I came 2nd, and my brother came 3rd". This is derived from the endings of the spelled-out ordinal numbers: ensimmäinen, toinen, kolmas, neljäs, viides, kuudes, seitsemäs…

The system becomes rather complicated when the ordinal needs to be inflected, as the ordinal suffix is adjusted according to the case ending: 3:s (nominative case, which has no ending), 3:nnen (genitive case with ending ‑n), 3:tta (partitive case with ending ‑ta), 3:nnessa (inessive case with ending ‑ssa), 3:nteen (illative case with ending ‑en), 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 2:nen is rare even in the nominative case, as it is not significantly shorter than the full word toinen.

Irish

Numerals from 3 up form their ordinals uniformly by adding the suffix -ú: 3ú, 4ú, 5ú, 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 -iú after slender consonants; but when written as numbers, only the suffix itself (-ú) is written. In the case of 4 (ceathair), the final syllable is syncopated before the suffix, and in the case of 9 (naoi), 20 (fiche), and 1000 (míle), 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 -d; this is not reflected in writing. Exceptions are 20 (fiche) and 40 (daichead), both of whom form their ordinals by adding the suffix directly to the cardinal (fichiú and daicheadú).

When counting objects dó (2) becomes dhá and ceathair (4) becomes ceithre.

As in French, the vigesimal system is widely used, particularly in people's ages. Ceithre scór agus cúigdéag – 95.

The numbers 1 (aon) and 2 (dó) both have two separate ordinals: one regularly formed by adding -ú (aonú, dóú), and one suppletive form (céad, dara). The regular forms are restricted in their usage to actual numeric contexts, when counting. The latter are also used in counting, especially céad, but are used in broader, more abstract senses of 'first' and 'second' (or 'other'). In their broader senses, céad and dara are not written as 1ú and 2ú, though 1ú and 2ú may in a numeric context be read aloud as céad and dara (e.g., an 21ú lá may be read as an t-aonú lá is fiche or as an chéad lá is fiche).

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 /ftɐromu/, 2-я вторая /ftɐraja/, 2-й второй /ftɐroj/ (note that in the second example the vowel letter я represents two phonemes, one of which (/j/) is consonant).

Swedish

The general rule is that :a (for 1 and 2) or :e (for all other numbers, except 101:a, 42:a, et cetera) is appended to the numeral. The reason is that -a and -e respectively end the ordinal number words. The ordinals for 1 and 2 may however be given an -e form (förste and andre instead of första and andra) when used about a male person (masculine natural gender), and if so they are written 1:e and 2:e. When indicating dates, suffixes are never used. Examples: 1:a klass (first class (in elementary school)), 3:e utgåvan (third edition), but 6 november. Furthermore, suffixes can be left out if the number obviously is an ordinal number, example: 3 utg. (3rd ed). Using a full stop as an ordinal indicator is considered archaic, but still occurs in military contexts. Example: 5. komp (5th company).

Representation as period

In Basque, Bosnian / Croatian / Serbian, Czech, Danish, Estonian, Faroese, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Latvian, Norwegian, Polish, Slovak, Slovene, Turkish, among other languages, a period or full stop is written after the numeral.

The same usage, apparently borrowed from German,^[15] is now a standard in Polish, where it replaced the superscript of the last phoneme (following complex declension and gender patterns, e.g. 1^szy, 7^ma, 24^te, 100^ny).

Representation as prefix

Numbers in Malay and Indonesian are preceded by the ordinal prefix ke-; for example, ke-7, "seventh". The exception is pertama which means "first".

Numbers in Filipino are preceded by the ordinal prefix ika- or pang- (the latter subject to sandhi; for example, ika-7 or pam-7, "seventh". The exception is una, which means "first".

In Chinese an ordinal number is prefixed by 第 dì, for example 第一 "first", 第二 "second".

See also

• Numero sign
• Superior letter
• Superscripts and Subscripts

References

External links

• "number words", Woordenlijst (in Dutch) .