From: Timothy Partridge (timpart@perdix.demon.co.uk)
Date: Fri Apr 01 2005 - 13:32:47 CST
Philippe Verdy recently said:
> In French texts, we can see today either "No." or "no." entered as 3 basic
> letters and a dot, or "N°" or "n°" with two characters where the second is
> the degree symbol on Shift+")", located on PC keyboards between the "0" and
> "+" keys. But never "#"... When "N°" is used it is always meaning an ordinal
> (rank) that abbreviates the term "numéro", and not a cardinal meaning "count
> of" which in French is "nombre" commonly abbreviated as "Nbr." or "Nb."
> (with or without the capitalization of N).
>
> I think that Spanish users will use the masculine letter mark to compose
> "N°" or "n°", as they don't have the degree symbol on their native keyboard.
> (It may even happen that the real degree unit sign, for example in "60°41'N
> 5°16'W", is written using this masculine letter mark).
>
> I don't know what Italians enter, but the "No." abbreviation is also common
> there.
Medieval abbreviation conventions would suggest a superscript o (which would
mean some letters including this one have been omitted). Cappelli gives an n
with a superscript o dating from the 14th century. Alternatively you could
just omit the letters in the middle as in Dr for Doctor. In England the use
of a full stop afterwards tends to suggest that the rest of the word has
been dropped. (The lack of a full stop suggests that the last letter of the
abbreviation is the last letter of the original word.) Cappelli also lists
No. but without a date.
Tim
-- Tim Partridge. Any opinions expressed are mine only and not those of my employer
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