January 1 Doesn’t Need an “st”

The first thing I do when trying out a new Wordpress theme is get rid of the code that puts “th” and other such terminals after the number in a date.

Ex. January 1st, November 12th

Dates, like certain other written expressions, assume certain information on the part of the reader:

One writes January 1, but says “January first.”
One writes November 12, but says “November twelfth.”

The only time to use the “th, nd, rd” and “st” with numbers is with ordinal numbers.

Ordinal numbers are those used to indicate a progression.
Ex. first, second, third, fourth, fifth and so on. When written as numerals, they take the little terminals: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th

Some other words that assume information on the part of the reader are:

Xmas - so spelled, but meant to be pronounced “Christmas.”
Mr. - pronounced “Mister.”
Mrs. - Now pronounced “Missus,” which is a reduction of earlier “Mistress.”

On the other hand, the only way to pronounce the politically correct Ms seems to be “Miz.”

By the way, if you want to get rid of the “th” after dates on your site, find the code
(’l, F jS, Y’) and delete the S.

Don't want to miss a single tip? Subscribe to our RSS Feed!

Maeve on December 17, 2007 | Filed Under Spelling

Bookmark

14 Responses to “January 1 Doesn’t Need an “st””

Charlie on December 17th, 2007 3:42 pm

An interesting article, but in English English (in the UK), when the full date is written it is customary to include the ‘th’, ’st’ or ‘rd’. It would be quite odd indeed to leave them out. Mind you it would be odd to write January 1 to begin with. It is almost always expected that the month follow the day. We would normally write 1st January 2008 for instance.

Also it’s considered incorrect to ever write Xmas, despite its widespread use.
Daniel Scocco on December 17th, 2007 4:03 pm

Yeah I think the first question is whether it is correct or not. Afterwards it is a matter of style or preference.

What do you think Maeve?
Maeve on December 17th, 2007 5:24 pm

I was brought up on the Walsh Plain English Handbook in which the date without the “th” embellishment is given as the rule to be observed (514c): Columbus discovered America on October 12, 1492.

Likewise the most recent edition of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style gives the form for a date as August 9, 1988.

In my opinion adding “th” or “st” to a date is unnecessary and, to my American eyes, incorrect. I will continue to stamp it out of any Wordpress theme I use!
Charlie Rapple on December 17th, 2007 6:16 pm

Hi Maeve,
Picking up on another aspect of your post (maybe something you’ve covered before; apologies if so!). I was always taught that an abbreviation need not end in a full stop/period if the final letter of the abbreviated word is included. Thus I don’t put one after Mr or Mrs. Have you ever heard of this convention?
All the best,

Charlie.
Maeve on December 17th, 2007 6:39 pm

Charlie,
Yes, I know about this rule. It makes a lot of sense to me. I know that it is observed in French. According to the British grammar text I use (it’s very old) the author says that the period is “optional” at the end of an abbreviation that ends with the same letter the word ends with.

The Walsh Handbook prescribes the period after Mr., Mrs., and Dr. I can’t find a stated rule in Strunk and White, but there are many examples in which the period is used after Mr., Jr., and the like. I believe that this must be American usage.

I have ignored the rule in a previous article about the use of CE and BCE. The rule calls for these notations to be written C.E. and B.C.E., but I found it tedious so I left them out. My bad.

Another word on writing dates — The way I write the date in my own letters is 16 December 2007.
Dan on December 18th, 2007 8:41 am

In my (Australian) experience, the terminals are still considered completely correct, if a tad old-fashioned. Reasonably unusual on a business letter, reasonably normal on a personal letter or a diary entry etc. I’d certainly see nothing strange or offensive about seeing them on a blog, or not seeing them, for that matter. I suspect the date order (1 September vs September 1) follows the same pattern as the short date (12/16 in US, 16/12 in UK and former colonies like us). Out loud, we’d normally say “The sixteenth of December”, rather than “December sixteenth”, so it sort of makes sense.
Open English on December 18th, 2007 8:43 pm

This is such an interesting post. I assumed that in American English the endings were supposed to be there but I guess not. To me, it looks more elegant when they’re not there.
I’m going to eliminate them too!
Armen on December 19th, 2007 12:23 pm

What an interesting read; post and comments.

I’m from the U.K. and I’ve always used the ’st’ and ‘th’. I’m not an expert, but it seems logical to me, since that’s the way it’s said.

As for the month before day, what on earth is that all about? There’s some things I just don’t get about America. I don’t mind someone saying, “January 9th”, but when you write down the figures, why confuse the world by writing 1/9/08? Surely day/month/year is logical?

Sorry for the rant.
Maeve on December 19th, 2007 4:36 pm

If one places the day first when speaking, it’s logical to write 12 January or 12th January. It’s equally logical, if one says January 12 in speaking, to write January 12.

And yes, since we pronounce the “th” in speaking, we can argue that logic requires us to write January 12th and not January 12.

However, when we talk about monarchs, we read “Henry VIII” as “Henry the Eighth.” Logic is not always the most reliable guide when it comes to language.

This seems to be one of those “You say to-ma-to, I say to-mah-to” things. As long as one writes the name or a recognizable abbreviation of the month, no problem need arise.

Writers should probably follow the form that prevails in their country of residence. Publishers will want to address the question in their style sheet and adopt one specific form for stylistic consistency.

And Americans in England will need to be careful when the dentist’s receptionist gives them an appointment card with the notation 3/8/08. They may think their next appointment is for March 8 when it’s really for August 3!
Michael on December 19th, 2007 4:38 pm

Interesting, I guess I need to go off and change some things on my site then.
Steve Claridge on December 21st, 2007 8:58 am

Hello,

You wrote: “Ordinal numbers are those used to indicate a progression.”

Wouldn’t this be a strong argument for using terminals when writing dates as the number signifies the progression of the month?
jomon on January 14th, 2008 5:05 am

i am a malayali(INDIAN) ,knowing english little .but i want to study english and to speak english well.what can i do for that??
Trevor on February 25th, 2008 1:39 pm

I can see both sides of the issue.

I personally prefer “February 25th” instead of “February 25″ because today is the twenty-fifth day of February. However, you can also read it as day twenty-five of February. It’s all personal preference.

To #8 Armen: As an American myself, I’ve gotten fed up with our dates more recently, because

1. they don’t sort well (month, day, oh, and THEN year instead of an easier-for-a-computer-to-recognize day, month, year) and

2. the rest of the world thinks the date is otherwise (this leads to confusion)

I now date things with the ISO 8601 standard, “2008-02-25.” It leaves no confusion as to which number is referring to what (because it’s a progression of largest to smallest), the Americans get their day after the month, and the Europeans get everything in order. And it sorts -perfectly- in a spreadsheet or data table.

BTW I think it’s funny that the timestamp for this blog has it listed as “Decembe 17, 2007″ but all the comments have “December 17th, 2007,” all on an article that asserts the -th is incorrect. Ah, don’t you just love English?