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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]
The character known as the full point or full stop in British and Commonwealth English and as the period in North American English . serves multiple purposes. As the full stop, it is used to mark the end of a sentence. It is also used, as the full point, to indicate abbreviation, including of names as initials: [10]
The first cell in each row gives a symbol; The second is a link to the article that details that symbol, using its Unicode standard name or common alias. (Holding the mouse pointer on the hyperlink will pop up a summary of the symbol's function.);
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.
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).
"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 ...
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 ...
Such citations and abbreviations are found in court decisions, statutes, regulations, journal articles, books, and other documents. Below is a basic list of very common abbreviations. Because publishers adopt different practices regarding how abbreviations are printed, one may find abbreviations with or without periods for each letter.