page_title: Ordinal indicator
section_title: Design
hierarchical_section_title: Ordinal indicator / Design
caption_attribution_description: English: Top alignment of ordinal indicators. Português: Alinhamento superior dos indicadores ordinais.
context_page_description: 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, º, and feminine ordinal indicator, ª, 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 superscripted abbreviations was common in 19th-century writing, and was also found in handwritten English until at least the late 19th century.
context_section_description: In correct typography, the ordinal indicators ª and º should be distinguishable from other characters.
  The masculine ordinal indicator º is often confused with the degree sign ° (U+00B0), 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 o, and thus may be oval or elliptical, have a varying line thickness.
  Ordinal 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 (i.e., the top of the elevated letter a and letter o) must be aligned with the cap height of the font. The alignment of the top of superscripted letters a and o 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 (making them thinner) to draw superscripts.
caption: Alignment of the ordinal indicator (left) and superscript characters (right), in the Portuguese abbreviation “1.º E.ᵈᵒ” (1st floor left), in a monotone font and in a variable stroke width font.
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