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Re: ordinal numbers

for

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Apr 30, 2008 4:40PM

Andy Mabbett wrote:

> My dictionary gives abbreviation as "A shortened form of a word or
> phrase".

Agreed.

> "59th" is a short form of "fifty ninth", is it not?

No, it isn't. Just being shorter does not make it a shortened form or
short form.

Is "sata" a short form of "hundred"? It is shorter, is it not?

Being an abbreviation means that you have omitted something to make an
expression shorter. In effect, you leave out some characters. You might
add some punctuation to indicate it as an abbreviation, or you might
change lowercase to uppercase, but you don't just use something else.

Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/