def _check_positioning(series):
    """Returns a Series of unicode numbers of an given Series object
    
    Parameters
    ----------
    series : Series
        Dataframe Series containing an alphabetical character
    
    Returns
    -------
    Series or integer
        returns Series with unicode numbers representing the alphabetical symbol or '1' if TypeError occurs.
    """
    try:
        return series.apply(lambda x: ord(x))
    except TypeError:
        return 1
