Learn English – Uppercase ordinal numbers

ordinal-numbers

Is it correct to use uppercase ordinals when the rest of the whole sentence should be in uppercase?

11TH FEBRUARY 2016 or 11th FEBRUARY 2016

among the above, which one is correct? Or are there no such rules?

Best Answer

The usual answer is to consult the style guide of your organisation.

There is an online tool you can use to help with title capitalisation, but it only deals with the capitalisation of the first letter of each word. There are three style guides to choose from, including AP and Chicago Manual of Style. In any case (no pun intended), if you type in "11th", the "th" remains in lower case.

As this doesn't truly help your situation where everything (else) is capitalised, the question is what kind of a thing "11th" really is. Richard Nordquist at About Education considers them to be numerals followed by abbreviations.

If we consider "11th" to really be the same as "eleven" with "th" tacked on, and the "eleven" portion replaced by the numeral "11", Frankenstein though that might be, then what we are left with is really just the number spelt out, sort of.

Looking further afield, a number of articles on style close with something along the lines of whatever you choose, be consistent:

So if the rest of your spelt-out words are in capitals, by a consistency argument, so should the trailing "TH".

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