Whatever looks best to your eye will work; small cap c with oldstyle numbers is only one of many possibilities. The only hard, fast rule is that should be NO period following the c

I would stick with a lowercase c. (with a period) especially if you have e.g. and i.e. in the document.
Tim

It will be used on picture labels for an major art gallery.
Anyone recall what they use on labels at other galleries with regards to circa?

D.

I would stick with a lowercase c. (with a period) especially if you have e.g. and i.e. in the document.

Tim, you're welcome to do it your way; however, The Chicago Manual of Style recommends: "Common Latin abbreviations such as 'etc,' 'eg,' 'ie,' are set in roman type without punctuation." This includes c for circa; c. is commonly used as an abbreviation for century. So, "circa 16th century" would translate as "c 16th c." Or not...

Perhaps one of the reasons that the "no period" version doesn't look as logical as it used to is that we come across a lot of mixed alpha-numeric "words" these days, eg (ha!) in passwords.

However, as the abbreviation for software versions is " v4.3" rather than v.4.3, and being a minimalist, I would stick with Chicago.

Also, Bringhurst is in the tradition of "anti-unnecessary marks", which he characterizes as filling text with grapeshot (or something similar, can't remember exactly).

On the Chicago Manual of Style website they use "e.g." and "i.e." with periods in the question on this page about using the two abbreviations:

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/cmosfaq/cmosfaq.Abbreviations...

As far as I can tell, omitting the periods is a fairly recent British convention.

In CMS, possibly, however I would use punctuation for etc. e.g. i.e., the abbreviation for century commonly used in UK is C. The Oxford house style and Hart's Rules suggest any abbreviation that has the first and last letter needn't be punctuated whereas any other lowercase abbreviation should be.

c. 16th C (or c. C16) is how I would set circa 16th century.

{edit Bringhurst's quote is "birdshot and wormholes"}

Tim

>“birdshot and wormholes”

Right. Birdshot is a bit off as a simile, but I suppose flyturds isn't really RB's style.

the abbreviation for century commonly used in UK is C. The Oxford house style and Hart’s Rules suggest any abbreviation that has the first and last letter needn’t be punctuated whereas any other lowercase abbreviation should be.

Good point...where you ARE dictates how you format. The Brits have their own ideas about the proper use of single and double quotes (as do the Germans and the French and...)