What it is
An abbreviation and an ordinal both shorten something, and both carry a mark to show it. Whether that mark is a stop at the end, an apostrophe before whatever attaches to it, or a pair of letters closed up to a figure is a settled choice rather than a deduction.
The options are open on both counts. A shortened word may close on a stop or run bare; a suffix may be separated from it or written solid; an ordinal may be a figure with letters, a figure with a separated suffix, or a word. Neither language compels an answer to any of these.
The form of a pointer into a provision belongs to the citation record. What is left here is the mark on the shortened form and the marker on the ordinal.
Where the expectation comes from
House on balance: of the three questions this record answers, two are settled by guides and one by a code. The deeper finding is that the two authorities do not answer the same question at all.
- English, guide-borne. The English Style Guide divides shortenings at 2.2, in its full-stop section, by where the letters went: a truncation, with the end deleted, takes a point, as in "Co.", "Art." and "Chap."; a contraction, with the middle removed, does not, as in "Dr", "Ms" and "Ltd". At 6.2 ordinals run one to nine in full, then 10th, 11th, 21st, 22nd and so on, with contexts that keep the figure ("2nd edition") against contexts that do not ("third country"), and a note that legal text spells the ordinal out.
- Turkish, code-borne, and ruling the join rather than the ending. The Türk Dil Kurumu separates a suffix from an abbreviation with an apostrophe, as in "TBMM'nin" and "BM'de", and does the same after a numeral, as in "1985'te" and "8'inci madde". Its abbreviation rules keep the stop out of upper-case forms apart from the traditional "T.C." and "T.".
- Inside Turkish the question is answered twice. The drafting Yönetmelik writes the same ordinal with a space and no apostrophe, attested in its own dayanak, "7 nci ve 537 nci maddelerine". The code binds the community and the Yönetmelik binds legislative drafting, and inside legislative drafting the Yönetmelik is the one that governs.
- Initials are ruled by neither. The English guide regulates the practice out instead: 5.1 asks that a first name be spelled out at first mention and contracted afterwards, and dropped where it cannot be traced. The Turkish writing rules opened for this record do not reach initials at all.
Consequences for translation
Each side is determinate once its authority is known. The difficulty is that the two sides are not converses of one another.
- English decides whether a stop closes the shortened word; Turkish decides whether an apostrophe opens what follows it. A translator converting the mark rather than the question puts a stop inside a Turkish acronym, or an apostrophe before an English plural, each an error the other language never had the chance to make.
- The ordinal can leave punctuation altogether. Because 6.2 sends the ordinal into words in legal text, a Turkish figure with a separated suffix becomes an English word and no mark survives the conversion at all.
- Naming the target language does not fix the Turkish form. Two authorities give the same ordinal two shapes and the text type decides between them, so a finding citing the orthography code against a legislative draft cites the wrong authority.
- Both halves are checkable without judgement, which makes a wrong mark a finding rather than a preference: inside the guide's reach for the English, across the community for the Turkish.
- Initials are the exception, because the answer is to avoid them. Expanding or dropping one is a decision about content rather than about a mark.
Examples
EN>TR
- Source: Dr
- Target: Dr.
- Comment: The same abbreviation of the same word, as each authority prints it. The English guide at 2.2 treats it as a contraction, the middle of the word removed, and gives it no point; the Turkish code lists it among those that close on one. Nothing about the word decides this, and a translator carrying the English form across would have deleted a mark the code requires.
TR>EN
- Source: 8'inci madde
- Target: Art. 8
- Comment: The Turkish code's printed ordinal beside the English guide's printed truncation. Two marks move in opposite directions: the apostrophe separating the Turkish suffix goes, a point appears at the end of the shortened English noun, and the number stops being an ordinal. The Turkish side is where the community's authorities part, since the drafting Yönetmelik writes that same ordinal with a space and no apostrophe.
References
- Türk Dil Kurumu, Yazım Kuralları: the pages Kesme İşareti and Kısaltmalar, and the Nokta section of Noktalama İşaretleri, read at tdk.gov.tr.
- English Style Guide. Directorate-General for Translation, European Commission, eighth edition January 2016, file consulted 21 November 2025. Sections 2.2 (Full stop), 5.1 (First names) and 6.2 (Ordinal numbers).
- Mevzuat Hazırlama Usul ve Esasları Hakkında Yönetmelik, put into force by Cumhurbaşkanı Kararı 5210 of 23 February 2022, Resmî Gazete of 24 February 2022, sayı 31760. Madde 21 (Atıfların yapılması), with the form attested in the instrument's own dayanak.