Comments on: January 1 Doesn’t Need an “st”

By: Grace S.

Grace S. — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 18:33:35 +0000

As a commercial print proofreader, I use The Gregg Reference Manual. It indicates that for dates the numeral should stand alone, but for ordinals (as, for example, in street names) the letters should be added.

Gregg also has a general guideline for abbreviations (and it includes the ordinals in that category), to use the shortest form that can be used without sacrificing clarity of meaning. In the case of ordinals, they prefer to drop the “r” from “rd” (3d instead of 3rd) and the “n” from “nd” (2d instead of 2nd), although they indicate these are alternate forms. Other than in Gregg, I have never seen these numerals written this way, and do not edit out the “r” or “n” when I encounter them (in ordinals used correctly), because I believe it would look like a typo to customers and their audiences–at least in my part of the U.S.

By: Scott

Scott — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 11:25:37 +0000

Yes, I like the date format for comments as well. I have to say, I personally love the Japanese date standard of YYYY.MM.DD (i.e. 2009.02.14 ). It leaves very little confusion and all of the dates sort beautifully on my computer.

By: Una

Una — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 03:10:30 +0000

Did anyone else find it slightly hilarious that the line above the comments keeps stating
X on January the 12th, 13th etc?

By: Tami

Tami — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:59:30 +0000

I’m a public librarian and also do PR for a public library. I’m constantly after other staff not to submit events using the suffixes after the dates. When I’ve noticed this more and more frequently in writing everywhere including reputable news sites where one would have hoped the writers were trained properly (every academic and professional style source I’ve found says NO NO NO to st, rd, th, etc. after dates). I blame word processing programs that automatically put such suffixes into superscript if you write them. “If the program does this, then it must be correct.” This and the constant misuse of the possessive Apostrophe S for plurals have become my top pet peeves. I’ve also noticed that the dates for the comment posts on this web page use the suffixes.

By: Maeve

Maeve — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:58:48 +0000

Peter,
I read “October 12″ as “October twelfth.” I read “Henry VIII” as “Henry the Eighth.” I read “Xmas” as “Christmas.” There’s such a thing as convention.