The full stop (Commonwealth English), period (North American English), or full point (.), is a punctuation mark used for several purposes, most often to mark the end of a declarative sentence (as distinguished from a question or exclamation). A full stop is frequently used at the end of word abbreviations—in British usage, primarily truncations such as Rev., but not after contractions which retain the final letter such as Revd; in American English, it is used in both cases. It may be placed after an initial letter used to abbreviate a word. It is often placed after each individual letter in initialisms, (e.g., U.S.), but not usually in those that are acronyms (NATO). However, the use of full stops after letters in initialisms is declining, and many of these without punctuation have become accepted norms (e.g., UK and NATO). When used in a series (typically of three, an ellipsis) the mark is also used to indicate omitted words. In the English-speaking world, a punctuation mark identical to the full stop is used as the decimal separator and for other purposes, and may be called a point. In computing, it is called a dot. It is sometimes called a baseline dot to distinguish it from the interpunct (or middle dot).
History
Ancient Greek origin The full stop symbol derives from the Greek punctuation introduced by Aristophanes of Byzantium in the 3rd century BCE in Alexandria. In his system, there was a series of dots whose placement determined their meaning. His three punctuations were these: the end of a completed thought or expression was marked by a high dot ˙, called the stigmḕ teleía (στιγμὴ τελεία) or "terminal dot"; the "middle dot" ·, the stigmḕ mésē (στιγμὴ μέση), marked a division in a thought occasioning a longer breath (essentially a semicolon); the low dot ., called the hypostigmḕ (ὑποστιγμή) or "underdot", marked a division in a thought occasioning a shorter breath (essentially a comma). The name period is first attested (as the Latin loanword peridos) in Ælfric of Eynsham's Old English treatment on grammar. There, it was distinguished from the full stop (the distinctio) and continued the Greek underdot's earlier function as a comma between phrases. It shifted its meaning to a dot marking a full stop in the works of the 16th-century grammarians. In the 7th century, Isidore of Seville updated the system slightly; he assigned the dots to indicate short ., medium · and long · pauses in reading, respectively.
Medieval Latin to modern English In practice, scribes mostly employed the terminal dot; the others fell out of use and were later replaced by other symbols. From the 9th century onwards, the full stop began appearing as a low mark (instead of a high one), and by the time printing began in Western Europe, the lower dot was regular and then universal. In 19th-century texts, British English and American English both frequently used the terms period and full stop. The word period was used as a name for what printers often called the "full point", the punctuation mark that was a dot on the baseline and used in several situations. The phrase full stop was only used to refer to the punctuation mark when it was used to terminate a sentence. This terminological distinction seems to be eroding. For example, the 1998 edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage used full point for the mark used after an abbreviation, but full stop or full point when it was employed at the end of a sentence; the 2015 edition, however, treats them as synonymous (and prefers full stop), and New Hart's Rules does likewise (but prefers full point). The last edition (1989) of the original Hart's Rules (before it became The Oxford Guide to Style in 2002) exclusively used full point.
Usage Full stops are the most commonly used punctuation marks; analysis of texts indicate that approximately half of all punctuation marks used are full stops. Some of the usages of full stops are:
Ending sentences Full stops indicate the end of declarative sentences, in contrast to questions or exclamations. The full stop is omitted when adjacent to an ellipsis.
Abbreviations
It is usual in North American English to use full stops after initials; e.g.: A. A. Milne and George W. Bush. British usage is less strict. A few style guides discourage full stops after initials. However, there is a general trend and initiatives to spell out names in full instead of abbreviating them in order to avoid ambiguity. A full stop is used after some abbreviations. If the abbreviation ends a declaratory sentence, there is no additional period immediately following the full stop that ends the abbreviation (e.g. "My name is Gabriel Gama Jr."). Though two full stops (one for the abbreviation, one for the sentence ending) might be expected, conventionally only one is written. This is an intentional omission, and thus not haplography, which is an unintentional omission of a duplicate. In the case of an interrogative or exclamatory sentence ending with an abbreviation, a question or exclamation mark can still be added (e.g., "Are you Gabriel Gama Jr.?"). According to the Oxford Dictionaries, this does not include, for example, the standard abbreviations for titles such as Professor ("Prof.") or Reverend ("Rev."), because they do not end with the last letter of the word they are abbreviating. In American English, the common convention is to include the period after all such abbreviations.
Acronyms and initialisms In acronyms and initialisms, the modern style is generally to not use full points after each initial (e.g.: DNA, UK, USSR). The punctuation is somewhat more often used in American English, most commonly with U.S. and U.S.A. in particular, depending upon the house style of a particular writer or publisher. As some examples from American style guides, The Chicago Manual of Style (primarily for book and academic-journal publishing) deprecates the use of full points in initialisms, including U.S., while The Associated Press Stylebook (primarily for journalism) dispenses with full points in initialisms, including acronyms, except for certain two-letter cases, including U.S., U.K. and U.N., but not EU. Acronyms, which can be pronounced as words, have tended to lose full stops even when they were formerly used; e.g., Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services became Q.A.N.T.A.S., then QANTAS, and ultimately Qantas.
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