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It may be placed after an initial letter used to abbreviate a word. It is often placed after each individual letter in acronyms and initialisms (e.g. "U.S."). However, the use of full stops after letters in an initialism or acronym is declining, and many of these without punctuation have become accepted norms (e.g., "UK" and "NATO"). [b]
A period (a.k.a. full stop) is sometimes used to signify abbreviation, but opinion is divided as to when and if this convention is best practice. According to Hart's Rules, a word shortened by dropping letters from the end terminates with a period, whereas a word shorted by dropping letters from the middle does not.
Interpunct, Period: Decimal separator: ♀ ♂ ⚥ Gender symbol: LGBT symbols ` Grave (symbol) Quotation mark#Typewriters and early computers ̀: Grave (diacrictic) Acute, Circumflex, Tilde: Combining Diacritical Marks, Diacritic > Greater-than sign: Angle bracket « » Guillemet: Angle brackets, quotation marks: Much greater than Hedera
A shortening is an abbreviation formed by removing at least the last letter of a word (e.g. etc. and rhino), and sometimes also containing letters not present in the full form (e.g. bike). As a general rule, use a full point after a shortening that only exists in writing (e.g. etc. ) but not for a shortening that is used in speech (e.g. rhino ).
Acronyms are often spelled with the initial letter of each word in all caps with no punctuation. For some, an initialism [ 1 ] or alphabetism , connotes this general meaning, and an acronym is a subset with a narrower definition: an initialism pronounced as a word rather than as a sequence of letters.
Captions normally start with a capital letter. The text of captions should not be specially formatted (with italics, for example), except in ways that would apply if it occurred in the main text. Several discussions (e.g. this one ) have failed to reach a consensus on whether "stage directions" such as (right) or (behind podium) should be in ...
"after what has been written", "postscript" Used to indicate additions to a text after the signature of a letter. Example (in a letter format): "Sincerely, John Smith. PS Tell mother I say hello!" PPS post post scriptum "post-postscript" Used to indicate additions after a postscript. Sometimes extended to comical length with PPPS, PPPPS, and so ...
An inhabited initial is an initial, an enlarged letter at the beginning of a paragraph or other section of text that contains an illustration of human or animal figures within the letter. It is similar to a historiated initial (see below); however, the figures in historiated initials show an identifiable scene or story, while the figures in ...