Definition:Ordinal/Notation

Notation for Ordinal

The class of all ordinals can be found denoted $\On$.

In order to indicate that a set $S$ is an ordinal, this notation is often seen:

$\Ord S$

whose meaning is:

$S$ is an ordinal.

Thus $\operatorname {Ord}$ can be used as a propositional function whose domain is the class of all sets.

A tradition has grown up in set theory to use lowercase Greek letters $\alpha, \ \beta, \ \gamma, \ldots$ as symbols to represent variables over ordinals.

It is also customary to denote the ordering relation between ordinals as $\le$ rather than $\subseteq$ or $\preceq$.

Sources

• 1993: Keith Devlin: The Joy of Sets: Fundamentals of Contemporary Set Theory (2nd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): $\S 1$: Naive Set Theory: $\S 1.7$: Well-Orderings and Ordinals
• 2010: Raymond M. Smullyan and Melvin Fitting: Set Theory and the Continuum Problem (revised ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Chapter $5$: Ordinal Numbers: $\S 1$ Ordinal numbers: Definition $1.1$