For example, when an expression like “Tracking Number” is too lengthy, don’t you sometimes want to abbreviate the “Number” part?

With that in mind, I researched what abbreviations exist for “Number” and will share my findings.

Abbreviations for Number

No. is a symbol placed before numbers indicating a numerical order, called "numero sign" in English. In Japanese, it's read as "number" (英語: number). It has essentially the same meaning as the number sign #, for example, "No.5" means number 5. It's a symbolic representation of the abbreviation "no." for the word meaning number, with the first letter capitalized.

Originally, it came from Latin “numero” (singular ablative of numerus, meaning “by counting”), taking the first and last letters to form “no.”. In Romance language regions, it’s also interpreted as an abbreviation of equivalent words in each language (Spanish/Portuguese: número, French: numéro, Italian: numero, etc.). In English too, the abbreviation for “number” is “no.”.

• No. - Wikipedia

So I’ll use either “No.” or ”#”.

Here are some examples of applying Number abbreviations:

No.

Tracking No.

#

Tracking #

№

№ is not very familiar. It’s thin because it’s a single character.

Tracking №

That’s all about using Number abbreviations like “No.” and ”#” to create concise expressions from the Gemba.