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I cannot find any command available in a LaTeX package to produce the abbreviated version of the words second/seconde/seconds/secondes, when dealing with ordinals in French, as I would use for other ordinals like 3\ieme, for example. So far, I ended up defining

\newcommand{\cond}{\up{d}}

in my header, as suggested here. This produces the following rendering, for 2\cond in a beamer presentation for instance, which is fine:

enter image description here

But, first, I'm not quite sure then that it will always be consistently rendered with the other abbreviations for other (French) ordinals in the same document. Also, what I am looking for is not having to redefine this command in every single LaTeX file of mine, to make the call consistent with \ieme for the other ordinals. In 2014, it was pointed out here that LaTeX would lack the commands for these abbreviations. Is it still true?

Olivier
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  • And I am not talking about the classical debate for French people about when to use best the words « deuxième » or « second » (see - in French - https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second#Adjectif_num%C3%A9ral_ordinal). ;) – Olivier Dec 08 '21 at 23:57
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    The fmtcount package with babel will do this for you I think. It provides an \ordinal macro. – Alan Munn Dec 09 '21 at 00:03
  • @alanmunn, as far as I undesrtood, this will yield « 2e » in French, and not « 2nd ». – Olivier Dec 09 '21 at 15:13
  • I'm not quite understanding your goal. 2\up{d} is the same number of characters as \second. I could see a desire to have 2\up{d} automatically show up in an enumerate environment, but that doesn't seem to be what you're wanting. Maybe I'm not understanding what you mean by "self-defined". You talk about (re)defining this in all of your LaTeX files, which seems unavoidable (unless you have a personal package you've included everywhere), but then on an answer you remark about an argumentless command to produce the abbreviation. How are you intending to use this in a document? – Teepeemm Dec 10 '21 at 15:39
  • @Teepeemm, I have edited my question to answer your question. I hope this is clearer now. My main point is that I want all the commands to be consistent with one another (for my mind, at least), and that it would not be a hack of mine, but something consistently provided by one package (or even several of them, if needed). – Olivier Dec 11 '21 at 18:37

1 Answers1

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\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[french]{babel}

\begin{document}

In French, the correct abbreviations are: 2\up{d}, 2\up{de} and 2\ieme.

\end{document}

enter image description here

F. Pantigny
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  • Thanks for pointing out that it is not « 2nd » but « 2d ». I have corrected my question so. Still, I guess you claim there is no argumentless command to produce this abbreviation, then. – Olivier Dec 10 '21 at 15:32
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    +1, but the $ seems unnecessary and doesn’t give the desired result if realscripts is loaded. – Thérèse Dec 10 '21 at 15:44
  • @Thérèse: You are right. I will suppress the $. – F. Pantigny Dec 10 '21 at 17:26
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    @Olivier: Indeed. I think that you have to create your own macro... – F. Pantigny Dec 10 '21 at 17:28
  • @Olivier: I would abbreviate « second » into 2\ieme as the output of 2\up{d} is rather hard to read: something like « deux-d ». What is the point of insisting about the fact that there is no third? Btw, that is the reason why no specific macro is provided in babel-french for second/seconde/seconds/secondes. – Daniel Flipo Dec 13 '21 at 10:19
  • @DanielFlipo: The fact that the use of the adjective « second » leads to no possible existence of a third element is an urban legend (see this post and that post). Also, I am not judging the hardness to read it, since this is the normal way to abbreviate it. In any case, I am just trying to insert a sentence using « second degré » in its abbreviated form, and I obviously cannot choose to change « second » to « deuxième ». – Olivier Dec 14 '21 at 01:56
  • @DanielFlipo: By the way, I would really be interested in some source of yours (any documentation, email, whatever) about the reason(s) of the decision not to provide such a macro in babel-french, since this word does exist and sometimes cannot be replaced (as in the example I have just cited, within the French educational context). – Olivier Dec 14 '21 at 02:00
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    @Oliver: I have not been able to find any example of 2\up{d} mentioned in any typographic guide I know of… it's up to you to define a macro for it if you need it. – Daniel Flipo Dec 14 '21 at 09:30