- From: John Hudson <tiro@tiro.com>
- Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2013 11:18:22 -0700
- CC: www-style@w3.org
On 10/07/13 1:18 AM, John Daggett wrote:
> Note: ordinals are not superscripts even though they are often
> confused with them.
More precisely, an ordinal is a text unit consisting of a number
followed by an alphabetic sequence, whose purpose is usually to
adjectivise the number. Looked at another way, an ordinal is an
abbreviated form of writing the adjectival form, e.g. 6th instead of
sixth. In terms of display, there are three common conventions for
ordinals: 1) using normal alphabetic glyphs, 2) using superscript
alphabetic glyphs, 3) using underlined superscript alphabetic glyphs.
The latter conventions is both locale and type design specific, so some
fonts will provide for Iberian and Italian ordinals, e.g. 2ª and 8º,
with underlined superscripts and others with plain superscripts.
The OpenType Layout <ordn> features provide for mapping from regular
lowercase letters to ordinal indicator letters, which may be identical
to regular superscript letters, or might be underlined superscript
variants. In practice, there is a fair amount of variety in how
different font makers approach this feature, so results of applying
<ordn> will vary. Some font makers map only the Iberian underlined {a}
and {o} in the <ordn> feature, recommending to users to apply the <sups>
feature if they want to use plain superscripts in ordinals.
JH
Received on Wednesday, 10 July 2013 18:19:00 UTC