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Full stop
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A full stop ( . ) (British, New Zealand and Australian English) or period (American English and Canadian English)^[1] is the punctuation mark commonly placed at the end of sentences. In the 21st century, it is sometimes called a dot.^[2] In conversation, as opposed to linguistics, the term is often used to mean "the end of the matter." (For example, "We are calling a full stop to discussions on this subject.")

History[link]

The full stop symbol derives from Aristophanes of Byzantium who invented the system of punctuation where the height of placement of a dot on the line determined its meaning. The high dot (˙) was called a "periodos" and indicated a finished thought or sentence, the middle dot (·) was called a "kolon" and indicated part of a complete thought, while the low dot (.) was called a "telia" and also indicated part of a complete thought.^[3]

Usage[link]

Abbreviations[link]

A period is used after some abbreviations.^[4] 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.) This is called haplography. Though two periods (one for the abbreviation, one for the sentence ending) might be expected, conventionally only one is written. 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.?).

Titles[link]

In British English, abbreviations of titles often omit a period, as in Mr, Dr, Prof, Rev, Gen, which in American English would be given as Mr., Dr., Prof., Rev., Gen. According to the Oxford A–Z of Grammar and Punctuation, "If the abbreviation includes both the first and last letter of the abbreviated word, as in 'mister' and 'doctor', a period is not used." This does not include Professor, Reverend, General.^[5]

In this use, the period is also occasionally known as a suspension mark. This originates from the old practice of marking the end of an abbreviation with the final letter superscript and a dot beneath it (though still "suspended" above where a period would go). Another use of the suspension mark can be seen in examples such as the "c" in "Mc" (e.g., the Rand McNally logo).

Acronyms and initialisms[link]

In acronyms and initialisms, periods are somewhat more often placed after each initial in American English (for example, U.S. and U.S.S.R.) than in British English (US and USSR), but this depends much upon the house style of a particular writer or publisher.^[6] The American Chicago Manual of Style now deprecates the use of full stops in acronyms.^[7]

Mathematical usage[link]

The glyph has two alternative uses with regard to numbers. It can be used either as a decimal separator or to present large numbers in a much more readable form. The former use is more prevalent in English-speaking countries. In much of Europe, Southern Africa and Latin America (with the exception of Mexico due to the influence of the United States), a comma is used as a decimal separator, while a full stop or a space is used for the presentation of large numbers. The following are examples where the comma is or would be used as a decimal separator:

• 1.002,003 or 1 002,003 (One thousand and two and three thousandths)
• 1.002.003 or 1 002 003 (One million two thousand and three)

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 impractical in cases where the full stop is used as a decimal separator, hence the use of the interpunct: 5.2 · 2 = 10.4.^{[citation needed]} This notation is also seen when multiplying units in science; for example, 50 km/h could be written as 50 km·h⁻¹ (this can also be written as 50 km h⁻¹).

Punctuation styles when quoting[link]

The traditional convention in American English and in Canada is "aesthetic" punctuation, or "typesetters' quotation", where periods and commas are included inside quotation marks even if they are not part of the quoted sentence. The style used in the UK, and to a less extent in the U.S., is "logical punctuation", which stays true to the punctuation used by the original source, placing commas and full stops inside or outside quotation marks depending on where they were placed in the material that is being quoted. Scientific and technical publications, including in the U.S., almost universally use it for that reason.^[8]

The aesthetic or typesetter's rule was standard in early 19th-century Britain; it was advocated, for example, in the influential book The King's English by Fowler and Fowler.

• "Carefree" means "free from care or anxiety." (aesthetic or typesetters' style)
• "Carefree" means "free from care or anxiety". (logical style used here because the full stop was not part of the original quotation)

Before the advent of mechanical type, the order of quotation marks with full stops and commas was not given much consideration. The printing press required that the easily damaged smallest pieces of type for the comma and full stop be protected behind the more robust quotation marks.^{[9][unreliable source?]} Typesetters' style still adheres to this older tradition in formal writing. It is taught to American schoolchildren when they learn how to draft prose, and is strictly observed in most books, newspapers, magazines, and journals.

References: The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition; Hart's Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press, Oxford.

Spacing after a full stop[link]

There have been a number of conventions relating to the spacing after a full stop. Some examples are listed below:

• One word space (French Spacing). This is the current convention in countries that use the ISO basic Latin alphabet for published and final written work, as well as digital media.^[10][11]
• Two word spaces (English Spacing). The two-space convention stems from the use of the monospaced font on typewriters—the intent was to provide a clear break between sentences. This spacing method has been replaced by the single space convention in published print and digital media today.^[11][12]
• One widened space (such as an em space). This spacing was seen in historical typesetting practices (until the early twentieth century).^[13] It has also been used in other mechanical typesetting systems such as the Linotype machine^[14] and the TeX system.^[15] Modern computer-based digital fonts can adjust the spacing after terminal punctuation as well, creating space slightly wider than a standard word space.^[16]

Asian period[link]

In some Asian languages, notably Chinese and Japanese, a small circle is used instead of a solid dot: "。" (U+3002 "Ideographic Full Stop"). Notably, in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao usage, the full stop is written at center height instead of on the line.

In the Devanagari script, used to write Hindi, Sanskrit and some other Indian languages, a vertical line ("।") (U+0964 "Devanagari Danda") is used to mark the end of a sentence. In Hindi, it is known as poorna viraam (full stop). Some Indian languages also use the full stop, such as Marathi. In Tamil it is known as "Mutrupulli", which means End Dot.^{[citation needed]}

In Sinhala, it is known as kundaliya:"෴ " ((U+0DF4) symbol "full stop").Period were later introduced into Sinhala script after the introduction of paper due to the influence of Western languages. [1]

Urdu uses ("۔") (U+06D4) symbol.

In Thai, no symbol corresponding to the full stop is used as terminal punctuation. A sentence is written without spaces, and a space is typically used to mark the end of a clause or sentence.^{[citation needed]}

Use in telegrams[link]

The term STOP was used in telegrams in place of the full stop. The end of a sentence would be marked by STOP, because punctuation cost extra.^[17]

Encodings[link]

The character is encoded at U+002E . full stop (HTML: .).

Computing use[link]

In computing, the full stop is often used as a delimiter (commonly called a "dot"), such as in DNS lookups and file names.^{[citation needed]}

www.wikipedia.org

document.txt

192.168.0.1

It is used in many programming languages as an important part of the syntax. C uses it as a means of accessing a member of a struct, and this syntax was inherited by C++ as a means of accessing a member of a class or object. Java and Python also follow this convention. Pascal uses it both as a means of accessing a member of a record set (the equivalent of struct in C), a member of an object, and after the end construct which defines the body of the program. In Erlang, Prolog, and Smalltalk, it marks the end of a statement ("sentence"). In a regular expression, it represents a match of any character. In Perl and PHP, the full stop is the string concatenation operator. In the Haskell standard library, the full stop is the function composition operator.

In file systems, the full stop is commonly used to separate the extension of a file name from the name of the file. RISC OS uses full stops to separate levels of the hierarchical file system when writing path names—similar to / in Unix-based systems and \ in MS-DOS-based systems.

In Unix-like operating systems, some applications treat files or directories that start with a full stop as hidden. This means that they are not displayed or listed to the user by default.

In Unix-like systems and Microsoft Windows, the dot character represents the working directory of the file system. Two dots (..) represent the parent directory of the working directory.

Bourne shell-derived command-line interpreters, such as sh, ksh, and Bash, use the dot as a synonym for the source command, which reads a file and executes its content in the running interpreter.

See also[link]

• Decimal separator
• Dot
• Sentence spacing
• Terminal punctuation

Notes[link]

External links[link]

• Chicago Style Q&A on one space versus two after sentences

Andrew Garcia
Andrew Garcia in July 2010.
Background information
Birth name	Andrew Adrian Garcia
Born	(1985-10-18) October 18, 1985 (age 26)
Origin	Moreno Valley, California, United States
Genres	Pop, R&B
Occupations	Singer
Instruments	Vocals, guitar
Years active	2010–present
Associated acts	Yesterday, Today, Forever
Website	http://teamandrewgarcia.com

Andrew Adrian Garcia (born October 18, 1985)^[1] is an American singer from Moreno Valley, California who was the ninth place finalist on the ninth season of American Idol.

Personal life[link]

Garcia was born to Mexican parents. He also has an older brother. Garcia's fiancée, Christine Concepcion, is a popular artist on YouTube. Garcia has a son, Caeland, with her. Garcia has a tattoo of his son's name on the right side of his neck, a tattoo of an "A" on his wrist, a rose on his front left arm, and a pair of Christine's lips in red on the left side of his neck.

[edit] American Idol

Garcia auditioned for the ninth season in Pasadena, California. He sang "Sunday Morning" by Maroon 5 and was praised by all the judges, notably Simon Cowell, who called him a "genuinely good singer," as well as guest judge Katy Perry. He later appeared in Hollywood, where he sang Paula Abdul's song "Straight Up" and since has been particularly known for that performance.^[2]

He performed "Sugar, We’re Going Down", but according to the judges, did not come up to par with the musicality of "Straight Up", resulting in all four judges calling it "strange" commenting on his past "Straight Up" and urging him to return to the originality of the performance. Lee Dewyze and Andrew have become best friends over the show as told by Lee in his performance of Hey Jude

Garcia was eliminated on April 14, 2010 along with Katie Stevens. He was eliminated first, near the beginning of the show.

Performances/Results[link]

• ^Note 1 When Ryan Seacrest announced the results for this particular night, Garcia was among the Bottom 3 but declared safe second, as Michael Lynche was saved from elimination by the judges.
• ^Note 2 Due to the judges using their one save to save Michael Lynche, the Top 9 remained intact for another week.

[edit] Post-Idol

Garcia was featured in the American Idols LIVE! Tour 2010, where he sang "Straight Up" by Paula Abdul and "Sunday Morning" by Maroon 5.

Garcia released his first single "Crazy" on June 7, 2011.^[3]

In 2011, Garcia began performing with Yesterday, Today, Forever, a musical and comedy performing group.^[4] The group performed their first concert on October 9, 2011 in Honolulu, Hawaii.^[5]

In 2012, Garcia began appearing in Nigahiga videos.^{[citation needed]}

References[link]

External links[link]

• Andrew Garcia on Twitter
• Andrew Garcia at American Idol