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.
Also commonly encountered are the superscript or superior masculine ordinal indicator,, and feminine ordinal indicator,, 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
:wikt:1º|1º :wikt:primo|primo and :wikt:1ª|1ª :wikt:prima|prima "first, chief; prime quality".
The practice of underlined superscripted abbreviations was common in 19th-century writing, and was also found in handwritten English until at least the late 19th century.

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.
Examples of the usage of ordinal indicators in Italian are:
Galician also forms its ordinal numbers this way.
In Spanish, using the two final letters of the word as it is spelled is not allowed, except in the cases of primer before singular masculine nouns, which is not abbreviated as 1.º but as 1.er, of tercer before singular masculine nouns, which is not abbreviated as but as, 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 are shortened before feminine nouns, their correct forms for those cases are primera and. These can be represented as 1.ª and 3.ª

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 happened to be frequently combined with ordinal numerals indicating dates "on the third day" or in Anno Domini years, as in anno millesimo ab incarnatione domini nostri Iesu Christi.
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 primus dies, but primo die, shown as Io or io. 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: Xo with the month stated in the genitive case. Examples:
In correct typography, the ordinal indicators and should be distinguishable from other characters.
The masculine ordinal indicator is often confused with the degree sign , which looks very similar, and is available on the Italian and Latin American keyboard layouts. It was common in the early days of typography 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, have a varying line thickness.
Oridinal indicators may also be underlined. In Brazil underlining is mandatory, in Portugal it is not mandatory but it is "advisable" to avoid confusion with the degree sign.
Also, the ordinal indicators should be distinguishable from superscript characters. The top of the ordinal indicators must be aligned with the cap height 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 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 encoding in 1987, at positions 170 and 186, 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:
The named html entities ª and º were introduced in HTML 3.2.
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 :
character set
DEC Multinational, ISO-8859-1, ISO-8859-15, CP 819, CP 923, BraSCII, Commodore Amiga, RISC, CP 1004, Windows CP 1252AABA
IBM CP 437, IBM CP 860, CP 220, Atari ST, IBM CP 850, IBM CP 859, IBM CP 898A6A7
IBM CP 037, IBM CP 256, IBM CP 275, IBM CP 282, IBM CP 283, IBM CP 284, IBM CP 500, IBM CP 831, IBM CP 924, IBM CP 1047, IBM CP 1073, IBM CP 1078, IBM CP 10799A9B
T.61, Adobe Standard, NextStep MultinationalE3EB
HP Roman-8, Ventura InternationalF9FA
MacIntosh RomanBBBC
WangDCEC
ABICOMPDCDD

Typing

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 Chrome OS, the same AltGr+F, AltGr+M facilities are included in the UK-Extended language setting but the Compose function requires a add-on to Chrome.
On many mobile devices keyboards and can be obtained by keeping the pressure on the keys and, respectively, and then selecting the desired character.

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:
In German, Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, Serbian and some other languages, the role of the ordinal indicator is served by a simple dot, typographically identical to period or full stop. Writing out the endings 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 numbers; within a sentence it is recommended to write out the form with letters in full.
Serbian language 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

In 19th-century handwriting, these terminals were often elevated, that is to say written as superscripts. 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 ", 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. Style guide author Jack Lynch recommends turning off automatic superscripting of ordinals in Microsoft Word, because "no professionally printed books use superscripts".

French

uses the ordinal indicators er, re in feminine, e . French also uses the indicator d for the variant 2d – second; in feminine this indicator becomes de: 2de – seconde. In plural, all these indicators take a S: ers, res, es, ds, des.
These indicators use superscript formatting whenever it is available.

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. Most numbers follow the pattern exemplified by vint "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 ‑e. Optionally ‑ste and ‑de may be used, but this is more complex: 1ste , 2de , 4de , 20ste ...

Finnish

In Finnish orthography, when the numeral is followed by its head noun, 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, 3:nnen, 3:tta, 3:nnessa, 3:nteen, 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 is written. In the case of 4, the final syllable is syncopated 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 -d; 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.
When counting objects dó becomes dhá and ceathair becomes ceithre.
As in French, the vigesimal system is widely used, particularly in people's ages. Ceithre scór agus cúigdéag – 95.
The numbers 1 and 2 both have two separate ordinals: one regularly formed by adding -ú, 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 céad, but are used in broader, more abstract senses of 'first' and 'second'. 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.
CardinalOrdinal
1a h-aonaonú or céad
2a dódóú or dara
3a trítríú
4a ceathairceathrú
5a cúigcúigiú
6a séséú
7a seachtseachtú
8a hochtochtú
9a naoinaoú
10a deichdeichiú
20fiche or scórfichiú
30triochatriochadú
40daichead, ceathracha or dhá scórdaicheadú or ceathrachadú
50caogacaogadú
60seasca or trí scórseascadú
70seachtóseachtódú
80ochtó or ceithre scórochtódú
90nóchanóchadú
100céadcéadú
1000mílemíliú

Russian

One or two letters of the spelled-out numeral are appended to it. 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 .

Swedish

The general rule is that :a or :e 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 when used about a male person, and if so they are written 1:e and 2:e. When indicating dates, suffixes are never used. Examples: 1:a klass, 3:e utgåvan, but 6 november. Furthermore, suffixes can be left out if the number obviously is an ordinal number, example: 3 utg.. Using a full stop as an ordinal indicator is considered archaic, but still occurs in military contexts. Example: 5. komp.

Representation as period

In Basque, Bosnian / Croatian / Serbian, Czech, Danish, Estonian, Faroese, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Latvian, Norwegian, Slovak, Slovene, Turkish, among other languages,
a period or full stop is written after the numeral.
The same usage, apparently borrowed from German, is now a standard in Polish, where it replaced the superscript of the last syllable.

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 and Japanese, an ordinal number is prefixed by 第 dì / dai; for example, 第一 "first", 第二 "second".