[Tex/LaTex] What’s the quickest way to write “2nd” “3rd” etc in LaTeX

Question

If I want to use abbreviations for second, third and so on in my LaTeX documents, I am currently doing this: 2$^{nd}$ which seems unsatisfactory. Is there a macro I'm missing? I'm sure I could define one myself, and it would be fairly easy. But this looks like something that should already have been covered…

Answer 1

You should not use math, when it is normal text. Use \textsuperscript instead: 2\textsuperscript{nd}. You can also define a shortcut for this, e.g.

\newcommand{\ts}{\textsuperscript}

Then you could use 2\ts{nd} in the text.

Edit:
An even nicer solution is to load the package nth with the option super and use the \nth command:

\usepackage[super]{nth}
\nth{1}, \nth{2}, \nth{3}, \nth{4}