# How to change page numbering format from “1” to “Page first”?

In document class Article, the normal page numbering, for example is

1


I would like to have the page number look like:

Page first


1


How can I do it?

• And Page second and Page third etc? This can get really tedious. Using something like fmtcount package and fancyhdr it is easier. – user31729 Jan 10 '17 at 22:03
• @Christian Hupfer, yes, your comment is completely right. Thanks. – Math-Data Jan 10 '17 at 22:10
• Can I ask why, 'page first' doesn't sound like something I'd normally see in English. 'First page' of course is perfectly normal. Lemony Snicket rather esoterically numbered his A Series of Unfortunate Events books: 'book the first', 'book the second' and so on, but 'page first' really sounds like a grammar error to me, is it definitely what you're after? – Au101 Jan 10 '17 at 23:05
• @Christian Hupfer, yes, you are right. I've made a grammatical mistake. – Math-Data Jan 11 '17 at 10:24

This uses the ordinal string of the ordinal number, i.e. 1st is first, etc, set in the page footer, using fmtcount and fancyhdr.

Do I recommend such a numbering style? No, it does not look nice, but I am not from the Federal Bureau of Aesthetics ;-)

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{fmtcount}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}

\fancypagestyle{plain}{%
\fancyhf{}
\cfoot{Page \ordinalstring{page}}
}
\begin{document}
\pagestyle{plain}
\blindtext[50]

\end{document}


• Perfect. The best answer! Hi. – Sebastiano Jan 10 '17 at 22:31
• @Sebastiano: Hello -- thanks, but 'best' is something which is primarily opinion-based – user31729 Jan 10 '17 at 22:41

Like this:

.....
\usepackage{fmtcount}
.....

\begin{document}
.....
Page\,\ordinal{page}
.....


Of course, as Christian Hupfer pointed, you normally use such a code when setting the headers/footers formatting with fancyhdr or titleps. Note that fmtcount is language-aware for some languages: english, french, german; italian, portuguese, spanish.

I'll give the titleps way:

\usepackage{babel}
......
\renewpagestyle{plain}
\setfoot{}{\pagename\,\ordinal{page}}{}
\pagestyle{plain}
.....

• \Page? Did I miss a command named \Page? (+1) – user31729 Jan 10 '17 at 22:11
• @Christian Hupfer: Bad reflex. We type so often backslashes in TeX… Actually, I thought of a multilanguage version with babel. – Bernard Jan 10 '17 at 22:19
• more often we we forget the backslashes ;-) – user31729 Jan 10 '17 at 22:21