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Looking for correct character: ordinal, sort-of
Posted by nina in
21 Jun 2011 — 3:47am
21 Jun 2011 — 3:47am
Hello all,
I'm currently typesetting a (German-language) book related to (local) history, and have come across a source (original text is in German, published in Switzerland in 1798) that lists a few statements. Interestingly, the ordinal numbers don't use periods as they would in German today («1.», etc.), but some sort of ordinal-o-type character. In my direct text source that cites this text, degree signs were used, but I doubt those are correct.
I don't have access to the original source. Does anyone happen to know what sort of symbol would historically have been used for this? Maybe I should use/make some sort of superscript lowercase "oh"?
Here's how it looks currently, with degree signs:
Thanks for any input!
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21 Jun 2011 — 4:08am
Liebe Nina,
the little raised o (and a) is in every decent text font. On my German keybord I get it via alt-J
The use of the ° sign for this is a frequent poor-mens workaround, to be avoided whenever possible.
Grüße Sie herzlich nach Basel!
.
21 Jun 2011 — 4:30am
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinal_indicator
21 Jun 2011 — 4:32am
You'll find that a lot of fonts have these two ordinals underlined, which maybe why /degree/ was resorted to. A typeface worth its salt will include at the very least a limited range of ordinals abdehilmnorst (or similar) which are not underlined. Some fonts will give you all 26 latin superiors, some will even give you them in upper case also.
N
21 Jun 2011 — 4:42am
Here in Italy, where ordinal indicators are used somewhat often (surely more often than degree signs), either you have access to a character palette or the only way to type something vaguely similar is using °. Not that the layman could even know (or care) it isn't a ordinal indicator. After all, it's right there on the keyboard.
The worst case happens when it's used in place of the feminine ordinal indicator too.
21 Jun 2011 — 6:25am
Ahhh, it's the good old ordmasculine! Thank you. I had only associated that with Spanish, Italian and the like for some reason.
(Wieder was gelernt! Und beste Grüße zurück nach Pegau.)
21 Jun 2011 — 7:46am
I had only associated that with Spanish, Italian and the like
Probably in this case the author borrowed from Latin (the like ;-)