Ordinal indicators on signage for numbered streets

[Doctor Whom]

The norm seems to be to sign numbered streets with the ordinal indicators (e.g., "6th St.").  New York City usually omits them (e.g., "W 47 St").  DC uses them on freeway signage (e.g., "6th St S.E."); on street blades, they have traditionally been omitted, but new street blades that are being phased in at a glacial pace have them.

How is it done where you live?  If ordinal indicators are used, are they superscripted, inline, or shown some other way?  Any other thoughts?

[Road Hog]

The fun ones are the mismatched ones, i.e. "21th St."

[Brandon]

The Chicago area uses them, and usually they are not superscripted on freeway/tollway signage.

Some examples:





On street blades, they most likely are superscripted.



On older rural, or formerly rural street blades, they're like this:



Found these in Saint Louis:

[Zeffy]

Here's what some of Manville's look like (closest place I can think of with numbered streets...):







The images are from GMSV.

As you can see, inconsistency happens, but apparently in the switch to Clearview(?) from the FHWA fonts (which, by the way, SUCKS, because at night you can barely read those signs with the negative contrast use...) they superscripted the ordinal while converting it to proper case.

[6a]

I always liked Cleveland's old ones. Very simple and to the point.



Their new ones are more New York style.



Columbus' old ones...I didn't like so much. It's almost like they didn't know how to handle such a thing.



But the new ones aren't much better. The superscript almost gets lost.



I've always been in favor of the New York / Cleveland style, personally.

[freebrickproductions]

Here's how Huntsville does it:
http://goo.gl/maps/SCkYO
http://goo.gl/maps/WT9yw
http://goo.gl/maps/H53Py

[1995hoo]

I've never understood why an ordinal indicator is needed because it seems like it'd be presumed regardless of its inclusion–just like if you write the date as, for example, "August 10, 2014," most readers will read the "10" as an ordinal.

[Billy F 1988]

Missoula's street grid, the way I see it, does have ordinals of which are subscripted starting from 14th Street down to 57th Street going into the South Hills area.

I think the avenues lining 39th Street are like that, too. 23rd Avenue is a good example of that.

[maplestar]

My hometown of Arnprior, Ontario has only a very small section, and they use ordinals, but they are spelled out.

From FIRST AVE:
https://www.google.com/maps/@45.434742,-76.345661,3a,37.5y,46.72h,83.66t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sEk_m8FHWZqyNu2yIAjcpIQ!2e0

to SEVENTH AVE:
https://www.google.com/maps/@45.437376,-76.337848,3a,37.2y,138.76h,90.63t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sn6g36fOHoYoUiINKt8vEFQ!2e0

(though there is no SIXTH AVE there). Yes, these are two different "eras" of street blades.

[Darkchylde]

In the KC area (both Missouri and Kansas), the ordinals are used both on street-level and freeway signage.

[jakeroot]

One near Tacoma where the "st" is superscript:

(ignore the sign errors please)

[myosh_tino]

In California, some older guide signs will superscript the ordinal...



...while almost all new guide signs will not.


both photos courtesy of the AARoads

[roadfro]

My hometown of Arnprior, Ontario has only a very small section, and they use ordinals, but they are spelled out.

From FIRST AVE:
https://www.google.com/maps/@45.434742,-76.345661,3a,37.5y,46.72h,83.66t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sEk_m8FHWZqyNu2yIAjcpIQ!2e0

to SEVENTH AVE:
https://www.google.com/maps/@45.437376,-76.337848,3a,37.2y,138.76h,90.63t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sn6g36fOHoYoUiINKt8vEFQ!2e0

(though there is no SIXTH AVE there). Yes, these are two different "eras" of street blades.

Reno, NV spells out the numbered streets also. Las Vegas uses the ordinal indicator.

[Bobby5280]

Methods vary all over the US. And even in the same town.

My own preference: if a city's sign shop or state DOT insists on using ordinals it's better if they just write out items like "6th Street" plain with no special treatment given to the "th" letters. It's either that or just leave off the "th" and write out "6 Street" instead.

The font files for FHWA Series Gothic and Clearview Highway are both very primitive in terms of typographic features. They have no real OpenType functionality to them, such as having specially designed and positioned ordinal characters that don't look like faked crap when activated.

Not many OpenType fonts have ordinal character features. Fewer have true ordinals where the smaller, super scripted characters have weights that look similar to the full height characters. There's not a whole lot of demand for that typographical feature. IMHO, a native small capitals character set with two positions (baseline and M height aligned) would work a lot better for any ordinals purposes rather than an attempt to shrink the size of lowercase characters into a super scripted ordinals arrangement.

[Scott5114]

Norman always includes the ordinals. Oklahoma City usually does, but omits them on a few signs.

Back in the button copy era, ODOT practice was to capitalize, subscript, and underline ordinals:


Since then, it's gotten a lot more inconsistent with ODOT–is anyone surprised, though?–with the most common treatments being caps-and-superscript with no underline, or just plain lowercase letters.

[jakeroot]

I apologize for reviving such an old topic, but I just noticed something over the weekend while I was in Vancouver, and I don't feel it necessary to start a new thread.

Not only do the street blades for the Greater Vancouver area exclude the ordinal indicator, but residents do not use the ordinal indicator in speech, nor does Google Maps use the indicator for the street numbers. Basically, the ordinal indicator does not exist in any capacity whatsoever. The MOT does not use the ordinal indicator on freeway signs in the Greater Vancouver area either.

From my experience in the Seattle area, while most signage excludes the ordinal indicator (WSDOT is inconsistent), residents use the ordinal indicator in speech, like the rest of the US. ("Take Cherry to fourth avenue, and turn left").

This is not true for the city of Vancouver, which employs ordinal indicators both in speech, and on street blades. The MOT also posts ordinal indicators on freeway signage within Vancouver city limits, unlike the rest of the Greater Vancouver area.

[jwolfer]

Gainesville and Alachua County FL do not have ordinals on street blades.. I did not get pics. Next time im there i will

LGMS428

[paulthemapguy]

I'll add to Brandon's post that I have never seen any town in the state of Illinois omit the "th," "nd," "st," or "rd" after the numbers.

[kphoger]

Street blades in town use the ordinals, but blades out in the countryside often omit them.

[AMLNet49]

both photos courtesy of the AARoads

Throwback to the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum being called "Network Associates Coliseum". Brings back MVP Baseball/Madden 2005 memories. I assume this sign is patched or replaced by a new sign with an exit box.

[bzakharin]

Philadelphia superscripts them on their regular street blades. On overpasses over freeways, they are signed in upper case with a space (8 TH ST), whereas on overhead signs they vary, sometimes lowercase with "Street" spelled out (8th Street), sometimes uppercase with no space (8TH ST), and sometimes with the number spelled out (Seventh St)

[MNHighwayMan]

In Des Moines, all numbered streets use the ordinal suffix (although surrounding Polk County doesn't, with a few exceptions!), but the implementation of that varies.

Older 6" legend signs use full size, lowercase ordinal suffixes, as seen here or here.
Newer 6" legend signs use superscript, lowercase, as seen here or here.
Older 4" legend signs are almost all universally superscript, uppercase, as seen here.
Newer 4" legend signs use a bigger sign and use superscript, lowercase, as seen here.

There are a few oddball ones, like this older 4" legend one that is lowercase, full size.

[mwb1848]

El Paso's numbered streets start about eleven blocks north of the U.S.-Mexico Border and ascend as they go south, so the numbers never went very high and a handful have been replaced with other names. In any case, all numeric street names are spelled out on blades, e.g., "First Ave.," "Third Ave.," "Ninth Ave.," etc.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

Duluth's can be fun, because sometimes you get two ordinals on one blade like N 13th Ave E. I've always seen them inline and never superscripted on modern blades. There are a few ancient street blades still hanging around in hard to reach places in Duluth, which had ordinals superscripted and underlined. Strangely, numerical names are spelled out as you cross E-W streets at signals, but not N-S ones, for example "First Street", "Second Street," etc. are spelled out on stoplight blades but "1st Ave", "2nd Ave", etc. are not.

Regarding BGSs in Minnesota ordinal inclusion is hit or miss. They're consistently signed in Duluth but very erratically in the Twin Cities.

[cl94]

To add to the insanity, whether or NYSDOT does it depends on the region. R11 doesn't include them, the rest do.