period after Mr, Ms, and Mrs in American English
Mavourine Tesoro
i'm curious as to why we writers of American English
use a "." after Mr., Ms., and Mrs., whereas
the British do not. are there other examples of
British English abbreviations that do not employ the period?
apologies to those UK'ers who might object to the
redundancy of `British English' :-)
michelle
Lawrence D'Oliveiro, Waikato University
>
> i'm curious as to why we writers of American English
> use a "." after Mr., Ms., and Mrs., whereas
> the British do not. are there other examples of
> British English abbreviations that do not employ the period?
I don't think this is specific to those abbreviations; it appears to be
part of a common style of omitting full stops (all right, periods :-))
from abbreviations altogether. For example, "P O Box", "Jane E Smith, BSc".
I wonder if the origin of this style has anything to do with the use of
SI units of measurement in Britain (you know--metres and kilograms), where
the official recommendation is to write "cm", "kg" and so on _without_
full stops?
Lawrence D'Oliveiro fone: +64-7-856-2889
Computer Services Dept fax: +64-7-838-4066
University of Waikato electric mail: l...@waikato.ac.nz
Hamilton, New Zealand 37^ 47' 26" S, 175^ 19' 7" E, GMT+13:00
Richard A. O'Keefe
> use a "." after Mr., Ms., and Mrs., whereas
> the British do not. are there other examples of
> British English abbreviations that do not employ the period?
The BrE rule is simple: an abbreviation gets an abbreviation point
if and only if the last letter of the abbreviation is not the last
letter of the word abbreviated.
"Mr" abbreviates "Mister"; the last letter of both is "r"; no point.
"Bro." abbreviates "Brother"; the last letters disagree; point needed.
The BrE convention gives you a jot more information.
--
I am writing a book on debugging aimed at 1st & 2nd year CS students using
C/Modula/Pascal-like languages. Please send suggestions (other than "you
_must_ cite "C Traps and Pitfalls") to o...@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au
Graham Toal
:
:i'm curious as to why we writers of American English
:use a "." after Mr., Ms., and Mrs., whereas
:the British do not. are there other examples of
:British English abbreviations that do not employ the period?
They'll be easy to find; in English, the rule is that if an abbreviation
ends with a letter from the original word (i.e. the removed letters are from
the middle of the word) then don't terminate with a ".". Therefore Dr will
not have a point, but Doc. will...
Graham
Glenn P Tesler
|> In article <29...@darkstar.ucsc.edu>, che...@cats.ucsc.edu (Mavourine Tesoro) writes:
|> > i'm curious as to why we writers of American English
|> > use a "." after Mr., Ms., and Mrs., whereas
|> > the British do not. are there other examples of
|> > British English abbreviations that do not employ the period?
> I wonder if the origin of this style has anything to do with the use of
> SI units of measurement in Britain (you know--metres and kilograms), where
> the official recommendation is to write "cm", "kg" and so on _without_
> full stops?
|>
|> The BrE rule is simple: an abbreviation gets an abbreviation point
|> if and only if the last letter of the abbreviation is not the last
|> letter of the word abbreviated.
Neither the full spelling "centimeter" nor "centimetre" of the abbreviation
"cm" seems to be consistent with this rule. Similarly, "kilogram" and
"kilogramme" don't end with a 'g' as "kg" does. Can anyone reconcile this
with the above quotes?
Glenn Tesler
gpte...@athena.mit.edu
Ethan Bradford
In article <96...@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au>, o...@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
|> In article <29...@darkstar.ucsc.edu>, che...@cats.ucsc.edu (Mavourine Tesoro) writes:
|> > i'm curious as to why we writers of American English
|> > use a "." after Mr., Ms., and Mrs., whereas
|> > the British do not. are there other examples of
|> > British English abbreviations that do not employ the period?
|> if and only if the last letter of the abbreviation is not the last
|> letter of the word abbreviated.
Shouldn't that be "BrE."? :')
Neither the full spelling "centimeter" nor "centimetre" of the abbreviation
"cm" seems to be consistent with this rule. Similarly, "kilogram" and
"kilogramme" don't end with a 'g' as "kg" does. Can anyone reconcile this
with the above quotes?
The SI rules are not the British rules, but a different set al-
together. In the SI rules, the standard abbreviations have no
periods.
--
-- Ethan (eth...@u.washington.edu)
ac...@vaxb.acs.unt.edu
I was taught in India that certain abbreviations, like Dr, Mr, Mrs, are
so commonly used that they had reached the status of full-fledged words
and did not require a period at the end.
Nutan
