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, ). Also commonly encountered are the superscript or superior (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 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 ), and was also found in handwritten English until at least the late 19th century (e.g. first abbreviated or 1). 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, for example, have underlined ordinal indicators, while most other fonts do not. Examples of the usage of ordinal indicators in Italian are: 1o, primo; 1a, prima ('first'), 2o, secondo; 2a, seconda ('second') 3o, terzo; 3a, terza ('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 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.