Aliasing breaking_the_4th_wall -> breaking_the_fourth_wall.

Reason: Same thing, one's just chatspeak. Since we default to actual words instead of numbers-for-words, would not support aliasing in reverse.

ooh, I did this one earlier while doing some tidying up. :)

I wouldn't say it's chatspeak, though, just laziness and lack of knowing when one is supposed to write out the word. :)

chatspeak IS laziness and not writing out the whole word. /linguistic nazi :P (intended in humour)

I define chat speak as u for you and l8r for later. ;) Which is different from acronyms like gtg (good to go or got to go) or brb, as long as they don't make up the bulk of a sentence -- (as in, "hang on, I need to brb a sec").. fourth/4th is simply confusion over what is acceptable when?

To be honest, I'm not sure which is 'grammatically correct' in this example.. Some very shallow digging provided me with some AP style guidelines, but even then the most 'conclusive" statement is to spell out one, two, three up until nine, or the bit where it says "The terms 1st, 2nd, 10th, 101st, first, second, tenth, one hundred first and so on are called ordinal numbers." ... which.. suggests that either's suitable. :)

but, it's a relatively moot. If nothing else, searching for 4th wall, indicates 'fourth wall' and the wikipedia page refers to it as fourth, so, good enough by me. :D

gtg and brb and lol and the like are all chatspeak- Just they've become so integrated that they've become mainstream language rather than -just- chatspeak. However, they did originate as chatspeak. Most of it can be blamed on cellphones/text messaging, really- It's a lot easier to type brb on a cellphone pad than it is to type "be right back".

As for the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th vs. first, second, third, fourth point- The numbers are used more when talking about maths or a list. however, when denoting a single instance you generally want to use the word instead.