# כ״ה בכסלו תשפ״א



## Ali Smith

שלום!

What do the quotation marks in כ״ה בכסלו תשפ״א mean? I know they're called גרשיים gershayim in Hebrew (although I have no idea why the dual form is used for each of them; a pair of them should be called גרשיים!).

תודה


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## slus

Gershayim are usually used for initials, such as:
בע"מ
ח"כ
רשג"ד
For some reason they are also used in Hebrew dates, although these represent numbers.

BTW one גרש two גרשיים. And the full format of תשפ"א is ה'תשפ"א.


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## Drink

They're used for anything that's not a "real word", including acronyms, numbers, names of letters, and in older texts also foreign words.

And yes, the pair is called גרשיים, while a single one is called a גרש.


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## slus

Drink, not exactly, because simple numbers such as
יא
יב
יג
etc. are formally written without them.


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## Drink

It depends on the context. They are often written without them when used separately, but they are nearly always written with them when used in a sentence.


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## Ali Smith

Thank you! Could you tell me what ה'תשפ"א and כ״ה mean though?


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## Drink

ה'תשפ"א is the current year (5781)

כ"ה is the date (25).


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## Ali Smith

Thank you!

ה' = 5,000
פ = 80
א = 1

ת = 400
ש = 300

Why didn't they write "700" using ן‎?

By the way, my cell phone does not say "כ״ה בכסלו ה'תשפ"א". It says כ״ה בכסלו תשפ״א. Do you have any idea why they omitted the ה'?


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## Drink

Ali Smith said:


> Why didn't they write "700" using ן‎?



That's not a commonly used convention, in fact I've never seen it at all. Traditionally, numbers past 400 are given as תק/תר/תש/תת/תתק.



Ali Smith said:


> By the way, my cell phone does not say "כ״ה בכסלו ה'תשפ"א". It says כ״ה בכסלו תשפ״א. Do you have any idea why they omitted the ה'?



Because really this use of the thousands digit is not a thoroughly established convention. So without a standard way to write the thousands digit, it was simply easier to omit it and have it be implied. Generally people know which millenium they are in. It's not all too different from writing 67 instead of 1967.


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