Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2018 April 20

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April 20

Style rule for vulgar fractions and ordinal suffixes

In a case where a writer wishes to use a vulgar fraction character, is it permissible to attach an ordinal suffix to the vulgar fraction?

• The clock is accurate to ⅒th of a second.
• The clock is accurate to ⅒ of a second.

I understand that ⅒th is technically redundant (one tenthth) but it seems more readable to me considering that ⅒ might also be read as "one out of ten".
I'm specifically looking for any style guide rule regarding this, though personal opinions are also welcome. --78.8.143.101 (talk) 15:51, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Not in Wikipedia, according to the eighth bullet point at MOS:FRAC: "Ordinal suffixes such as -th should not be used with fractions expressed in figures ..." Deor (talk) 16:05, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

The ordinal suffix seems as redundant as the a in "I have found over a 100 errors of fact in your essay". -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:46, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

"The clock is accurate to 1/10 th of a second" and "I have found over a one hundred errors..." sound like cousins to the RAS syndrome. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:43, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

One out of ten is one tenth. —Tamfang (talk) 05:38, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Sure, but it's not one ⅒ (= one one tenth), or one ⅒th (= one one tenthth). -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 10:12, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Jack, one one tenth is definitely redundant, unless the first one may mean "some", but no example for such a usage comes into my mind. While one one tenthth is actually one hundredth. So both are meaningless indeed.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 23:34, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

The sequence "⅒th" is meaningless. The character "⅒" on its own is equally meaningless. I would advise the OP, if (s)he wants a meaningful answer to his/her question, to replace them with something which actually makes sense. Incidentally, on Word the symbol chosen renders as a square with a question mark inside. Here it just renders as a square. If we assume the symbol represents a vulgar fraction then the two sentences are, for example,

• The clock is accurate to 1/10th second. and
• The clock is accurate to 1/10 second.

Both sentences are grammatical: cf

• On 25 April
• On 25th April

No, that's a bad analogy. There are two meanings for the word "tenth":

• (a) the ordinal of "ten" (Mervin was the the tenth king of England; in dates, a common style is to append -st, -nd, -rd or -th to the day of the month: on 2nd April, on 10th November etc.)
• (b) an amount equal to 10 per cent, or 0.10, of some other amount. We can write I ate one-tenth of the cake, or I ate 1/10 of the cake, but NOT I ate 1/10th of the cake. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 20:05, 23 April 2018 (UTC)