Full stop

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A full stop or period (sometimes stop, full point or dot), is the punctuation mark commonly placed at the end of several different types of sentences in English and several other languages. A full stop consists of a small dot placed at the end of a line of text, such as at the end of this sentence.

The term full stop is rarely used by speakers in the United States and Canada. If it is used in Canada, it may be generally differentiated from period in contexts where both might be used: a full stop is specifically a delimiting piece of punctuation that represents the end of a sentence. When a distinction is made, a period is then any appropriately sized and placed dot in English language text, including use in abbreviations (such as U.K.) and at the ends of sentences, but excluding certain special uses of dots at the bottom of a line of text, such as ellipses.

The term STOP was used in telegrams in place of the period in telegrams in the United States. The end of a sentence would be marked by STOP, as using FULL STOP was costly {Julian Borger in The Guardian, February 3, 2006, at [1]). The end of the entire telegram would be noted by FULL STOP.

The word "period", although recognised as an Americanism, is also used vernacularly throughout the English-speaking world to terminate a phrase or thought with finality and emphasis, as in "This is your last chance, period." The term full stop is also used in this sense in many parts of the world.

Abbreviations

The period is also used after abbreviations, such as Mrs. & Ms. If the abbreviation is ending a declaratory sentence an additional full stop is not needed (e.g. My name is Phil Simpson Jr.), but in the case of an interrogative or exclamatory sentence a question or exclamation mark is needed. In British English, "Dr" and "Mr" do not need a period, as they include both the first and last letter of the abbreviated word; but in American English, these are written "Dr." and "Mr." In this use, the period is also occasionally known as the suspension mark.

Mathematical usage

The same glyph has two separate uses with regard to numbers, the one applied being determined by the country it is used in: as a decimal separator and in presenting large numbers in a more readable form. In most English-speaking countries, the full stop has the former usage while a comma or a space is used for the latter:

• "1,000,000" (One million)
• "1,000.000" (One thousand)

In much of Europe, however, a comma is used as a decimal separator, while a full stop or a space is used for the presentation of large numbers.

In countries that use the comma as a decimal separator, the full stop is sometimes found as a multiplication sign, for example: 5,2 . 2 = 10,4. This usage is impossible in countries that use the period as a decimal separator, hence the use of the interpunct: 5.2 · 2 = 10.4

Differences in British English and American English

In British English, when a quotation mark appears at the end of a sentence the full stop is usually placed after it. The matter is partly determined by the length of the enclosed material: the longer it is, more acceptable it is that the full stop should come first. Any full sentence enclosed within quotation marks will have its full stop before the final quotation mark.

In American English the full stop normally comes before the quotation mark. (This applies to commas and some other punctuation, also.)

Examples of typical usage:

• [British:] You say "tomAYto", I say "tomAHto".
• [American:] You say "tomAYto," I say "tomAHto."

An exception to the American rule occurs when the placing of the full stop inside the quote would lead to ambiguity, for example in describing commands to be typed into a computer:

• At the prompt type "ls -lad".

In the case above, giving the instruction:

• At the prompt type "ls -lad."

would result in an error, since the full stop has special significance in instructions typed into a computer.

Spacing after full stop

In typewritten texts and other documents printed in fixed-width fonts, there is a convention among lay writers that two spaces are placed after the full stop (along with the other sentence enders: question mark and exclamation mark), as opposed to the single space used after other punctuation symbols. This is sometimes termed "French spacing".

In modern English-language typographical usage, debate has arisen concerning the proper number of trailing spaces after a full stop (or exclamation mark, or question mark) to separate sentences within a paragraph. Whereas two spaces are still regarded by many outside the publishing industry to be the better usage for monospace typefaces, the awkwardness that most word-processing applications have in representing correctly the 1.5 spaces that had previously become standard for typographically proportional (non-monospace) fonts has led to some confusion about how to render the space between sentences using only word-processing tools.

Many descriptivists (i.e. people who describe how language is used in practice) support the notion that a single space after a full stop should be considered standard because it has been the norm in mainstream publishing for many decades. This also includes the MLA, APA, and the CMS. Many prescriptivists (i.e. people who make recommendations for rules of language use), meanwhile, adhere to the earlier use of two spaces on typewriters to make the separation of sentences more salient than separation of elements within sentences. Some, however, accept that in modern word-processing the single space is better because two spaces may stretch inordinately when full justification is applied. Additionally, many computer typefaces are designed proportionately to alleviate the need for the double space (the opposition would of course reply that this does nothing to satisfy the aforementioned saliency issue). Most modern typesetters, designers, and desktop publishers use only one space after a period, as do most mainstream publishers of books and journals.^[1]

With the advent of standardized HTML for rendering webpages, the broader distinction between full stop spacing and internal spacing in a sentence has become largely moot on the World Wide Web. Standardized HTML treats additional whitespace after the first space as immaterial (siding unquestioningly with the one-spacers), and ignores it when rendering the page. A common workaround for this is the use of   (Non-breaking space) to represent extra spaces, and is done automatically by some WYSIWYG editors.

A strong argument for having two spaces after a full stop arises from accessibility, or universal design. It is often reported that people with dyslexia prefer double spacing after a full stop.^[2] See justification (typesetting) for further discussion.

Asian full stop

In some Asian languages, notably Chinese and Japanese, a small circle is used instead of a solid dot: "。" (U+3002 "Ideographic Full Stop"). Unlike the Western full stop, this is often used to separate consecutive sentences, rather than to finish every sentence; it is frequently left out where a sentence stands alone, or where text is terminated by a quotation mark instead.

In these languages, the partition sign "·" (間隔號 jiāngéhào) is often used to separate the given name and the family name in other languages: for example, William Shakespeare is represented in Chinese as 威廉‧莎士比亞 (Weilian·Shashibiya), and in Japanese as ウィリアム・シェイクスピア (Uiriamu·Sheikusupia), with a partition sign inserted between the characters of "William" and those of "Shakespeare".

The Chinese partition sign is also used to separate book title and chapter title when they are mentioned consecutively (with book title first, then chapter).

Computing use

In computing, the period is often used as a delimiter commonly called a "dot", for example in DNS lookups and file names. For example:

www.example.com

In computer programming, the full stop corresponds to Unicode and ASCII character 46, or 0x2E.

Use in telephone numbers

Gradually replacing the dashes between a series of numbers, the use of periods has made an increasing presence in North America since the mid-1990s. The style is one of the ITU-T recommended alternatives to the use of a simple space to visually separate groups of numbers. The practice is most notable in higher developed metropolitan areas. Performing arts associations, fine restaurants, colleges and universities, and high-end goods and service providers frequently make use of this format. Some believe this may be influenced by the Internet, as dots separate sequences in both IP and URL addresses. Another suggestion is that the style is "fancier" than the hyphen (used more often than the full stop in North America), based on the notion that the full stop style originated in Europe. In addition, on a standard numpad, the period is considered by some to be easier to reach, located right below the 3 key and to the right of the 0 key, whereas the hyphen is in the far upper right-hand corner.

Notes

1. ^ "Use one space (not two) after these punctuation marks [sc. period, question mark, exclamation point, or colon], as the practice of using two spaces is just another holdover from using a typewriter." Schriver, Karen A, Dynamics in Document Design, Wiley, NY, 1997, p. 502
2. ^ A web search produces a few sources that express this. Like http://juicystudio.com/article/zoom-low-vision.php

See also

• Dot
• Decimal separator

External links

• Chicago Style Q&A on one space versus two after sentences
• The Double-Space Debate A discussion on Blogdorf about one space versus two after sentences
• FontSite typographic design center on one space versus two after sentences