Everything about Ordinal Indicator totally explained
» º redirects here. It isn't to be confused with the degree symbol °.In written languages, an ordinal indicator is a sign adjacent to a numeral denoting that it's an ordinal number, rather than a cardinal number. The exact sign used varies in different languages.
Usage
» The suffixes
-st (for example 21st),
-nd or
-d (for example 22nd or 22d),
-rd or
-d (for example 23rd or 23d), and
-th (for example 24th) are used. Formerly, these indicators were
superscripts (2
nd, 34
th) but by the late 20th century, formatting them on the line was favoured. The superscript style has, since the 1990s, been revived somewhat as some
word processors format ordinal indicators as superscripts automatically.
» The suffixes
-er (for example ),
-re (for example ), and
-e (for example ). These indicators use superscript formatting whenever it's available.
» 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.
» 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 phoneme (following complex declension and gender patterns, for example,,,, ; use of such contractions is considered an error).
» The suffixes
-o and
-a are appended to the numeral depending on whether the number's
grammatical gender is masculine or feminine respectively. As with French, these signs are preferably superscripted, but in contrast, they're often
underlined as well. Some
character sets provide characters specifically for use as ordinal indicators in these languages: º and ª (in
Unicode U+00BA and U00AA). The masculine ordinal indicator U+00BA (º) is often confused with the
degree sign U+00B0 (°), which looks very similar in many fonts. The degree sign is a uniform circle and is never underlined, while the letter
o may be
oval or
elliptical and have a varying stroke width. The letter
o may also be underlined.
In Spanish, (an adjective form of ) before singular masculine nouns, isn't abbreviated as but as . The same happens with (an adjective form of ) before singular masculine nouns, which isn't abbreviated as but as
The suffix
-ú is appended to all numerals,
1ú, 2ú, 3ú 4ú etc., even though the written form doesn't simply attach the suffix
-ú to all numbers, for example
- a haon - chéad - 1ú
- a dó - dara - 2ú
- a trí - tríú - 3ú
- a ceathair - ceathrú - 4ú
- a cúig - cúigiú - 5ú
It is planned to remove this inaccurate suffix, for example
1ú Samhain (1st November) will become simply
1 Samhain.
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 don't indicate ordinals:
» Spanish uses the indicator letters in some abbreviations, such as for ("approved"); and for, a
Spanish name frequently used in compounds like .
In Portuguese, the underlined "º" and "ª" are used with many abbreviations, and should be preceded by a period. In fact, there's no limit for which words may be abbreviated this way. Sometimes, other letters are also written before the "º" or "ª". For example: for (a very formal prefix to the name), for (
Ltd.), for (
Ms.), etc.
» English has borrowed the "No." abbreviation from the Spanish word, applying it as an abbreviation for the English word "number". This is sometimes written as "Nº", with raised
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, isn't intended to indicate ordinality at all.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Ordinal Indicator'.
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