No Periods in British Written English!
 

http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglopheni...riod-full-stop

Wow - to my surprise a question on Jeopardy last night asked what do Brits call periods?

And the answer was "What are full stops"?

And it seems from the BBC link that periods are not even used in things like Mr. or Dr. (Mr - Dr) - so in British English there are no periods (not sure of dates like 21.02.17)...

Who would have thunk. Period.

Do some Brits use illegal periods?

What planet do you live on Pal? You really didn't know that onyu Women have periods in Britain?
A full stop is what you call a period. Period.

So only women have periods or full stops - that seems oxymoronic?

<<And it seems from the BBC link that periods are not even used in things like Mr. or Dr. (Mr - Dr) - so in British English there are no periods (not sure of dates like 21.02.17>>

Seriously? You didn't know this?

Geez. For all you prattle on about the time you've spent in the UK . . .

No Pal. In British English women have periods, sentences have full stops.

Geez. For all you prattle on about the time you've spent in the UK . . .>

should not that be the U.K.?

Yup in some 40 or so visits to the U.K. I was apparently slow on the uptake- have not been able to travel recently there - is this a new development?

Even Mr in a letter don't have a . (Mr.)?

Well I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer!

Cheers!(Wonder what they call an exclamation point -:exclamation full stop?)

People in my office had no idea what I was talking about when I said period instead of full stop.

No Pal. In British English women have periods, sentences have full stops.>

Too bad they never achieve full stops -must be a problem? Is that where the term 'bloody' came from?

Oh puleeze - the American dialect is full of such oddities.

Fancy calling a full stop (which ends the sentence) a “period” which goes on and on in time...

Fancy calling a “boot” a trunk, just because you put stuff in there? No reason at all, Santa does that with boots.

Fancy calling the bonnet a “hood” as in hoodlum - don’t you like cars?

And fancy calling a hemidemisemiquaver a 64th note? How banal!

One of the funniest, to us colonists, double-entendres between British - well English English and American English has got to be "fag"

Come over here and ask "do you have a fag" will get you flummoxed looks.

exclamation point?

no, you must mean exclamation mark.

:-)

<<Even Mr in a letter don't have a . (Mr.)?>>

The way I was taught (I'm British) an abbreviation doesn't take a full stop if it uses the final letter of the abbreviated word. So if you abbreviate the word "continued" as cont. it takes a full stop, but contd doesn't. Thus Mr, Mrs, Dr etc don't take full stops, although some people do use them.

And yeah, we don't call them periods. Used to make me snigger when I heard Americans use the sentence format "I've had enough if this. Period." Or similar.

"The way I was taught (I'm British) an abbreviation doesn't take a full stop if it uses the final letter of the abbreviated word."

I had the kind of English lessons where writing "disinterested" if you meant "uninterested" was a beating offence. Where the distinction between "fewer" and "less" was clearer than that between right and wrong. Or between Catholic and heathen.

And not once in 13 years did anyone even hint that "contd" was correct, but "cont" wasn't. Indeed, teachers even conceded that the alleged rule about split infinitives was etymologically deranged - but that you couldn't know for certain that all readers would be aware of that, so it never made sense to commit what others might think indicated you were sloppy.

The honest truth is that, even in the golden age of learn-by-rote robust education, Britain's never really been that meticulous about alleged grammatical "rules".

The honest truth is that, even in the golden age of learn-by-rote robust education, Britain's never really been that meticulous about alleged grammatical "rules".>

Unlike France where the august Academie de Francaise (sp?) pontificates exactly how French should be spoken and written- even to stupidity by advocating "le fin de la semaine (sp?) in lieu of "week-end" and arcane rules about grammar marks. Period.

PalenQ on Feb 21, 17 at 1:44pm

One of the funniest, to us colonists, double-entendres between British - well English English and American English has got to be "fag"


Actually, that hono(u)r would go to "rubber".

Or "fanny"?

Gotten.....now what sort of word is that?
I have got: You have got. Have you Americans got it? ;-)

don't get me started on got or get.

I'll get a coke" says the girl to the waiter and I want to scream "no, you'd like a coke, the waiter will get it for you"

Aaahhhh.

The one that gets me is 'first floor'.

In the UK, there is a ground floor and the next floor up is the first floor. In N. America, there is a ground floor which can also be called a first floor and the next floor up is always the second floor.

Now I look at it logically and say that the 'first' floor of any building is in fact the ground floor which means the next floor up is in fact the 'second' floor of the building. The UK version simply isn't logical.

Perhaps even more amazing to me is when someone in the UK refers to the 'floor' when they are talking about the outdoors. In the outdoors, you 'fall on the ground', there is no 'floor' to fall on!

Whether someone uses period or full stop, is simply a question of a definition. You can't apply any logic to which to use. But floor can have logic applied and yet it isn't in the UK.

Should we consider the logic of pronouncing potato the same in both places vs. the difference in the pronunciation of tomato? If a tomato is pronounced 'toe mah toe' why is potato not pronounced 'poh ta toe'?

In this age of laptops and iPads, putting a period after Mr or Mrs just confuses the word processor. I'm quite happy to full stop that habit.