In English it’s not idiomatic to write ordinal numbers by adding a full stop after the cardinal, as it is in German. Normally one writes “20th” (with the “th” optionally superscripted).
Interesting, I wasn’t aware of the German convention. It seems slightly better; formulations like ‘1st’ (1 stands for ‘fir’?) and ‘2nd’ (2 stands for ‘seco’?) and ‘3rd’ (3 stands for ‘thi’?) never made much sense.
Interesting, I wasn’t aware of the German convention. It seems slightly better;
As for me, I dislike stuff that looks like the end of a sentence but actually isn’t or vice versa, so I feel very uneasy when I have to use something ending with a full stop (e.g. “etc.”) immediately followed by something starting with a capital letter (e.g. “I” or a proper name), and I try to avoid that by reworking punctuation to make it clear whether or not I’m starting a new sentence. (Even in iii’s comment where “century” starts with a lowercase letter, some part of my brain alieves that there are two separate sentences.)
Interesting, I wasn’t aware of the German convention. It seems slightly better; formulations like ‘1st’ (1 stands for ‘fir’?) and ‘2nd’ (2 stands for ‘seco’?) and ‘3rd’ (3 stands for ‘thi’?) never made much sense.
As for me, I dislike stuff that looks like the end of a sentence but actually isn’t or vice versa, so I feel very uneasy when I have to use something ending with a full stop (e.g. “etc.”) immediately followed by something starting with a capital letter (e.g. “I” or a proper name), and I try to avoid that by reworking punctuation to make it clear whether or not I’m starting a new sentence. (Even in iii’s comment where “century” starts with a lowercase letter, some part of my brain alieves that there are two separate sentences.)