Ordnumerisk

Ordnumerisk is a term used to describe numbers written as words rather than digits. In linguistic, typographic, and computational contexts, ordnumerisk contrasts with numeral or digit-based representations such as 21 or 1. The concept covers both cardinal numbers (one, two, thirty-four) and ordinal numbers (first, twenty-fifth). In Swedish and other Nordic language contexts, ordnumerisk is sometimes used to indicate a representation of numbers in word form within annotation, style guides, or natural language processing discussions.

In practice, handling ordnumerisk data involves tasks such as spell-out normalization, converting words to numeric values, and applying language-specific rules for hyphenation, capitalization, and inflection. For computational processing, systems may need to recognize ordnumerisk expressions, map them to digits, or generate word forms from digits. This is relevant for text-to-speech synthesis, search and indexing, machine translation, and information extraction, where consistent handling of numbers improves accuracy and readability.

Examples include "twenty-one" versus "21" or "first" versus "1st." Some contexts require numbers to be spelled out, such as formal prose or certain style guides, while others prefer digits for clarity or brevity. The practical goal in many texts is consistency in how numbers are represented, whether in word form or numeric form.

See also: spell-out conventions, numeric normalization, natural language processing, numerals.