Double periods (or lack thereof) when an abbreviation ends a sentence

glennmagusharvey

This is an awkward issue.

The dealmaking was led by negotiators from the U.S..

The dealmaking was led by negotiators from the U.S.

Which sentence is more correct?

All Nines

I've been told it's the latter, but either way it comes out weird.

ClockworkUniverse

The latter. It just looks less stupid, and you can tell it's the end of a sentence usually by the capital letter at the start of the next word, or just from context otherwise.

glennmagusharvey

either way it comes out weird

Yeah.  Which is why it bugs me.

I hear it's supposed to be the latter, but in informal writing I use the former because I feel it's more technically correct, and without that extra period it seems like the sentence just ends without warning.  But obviously I can't do agenda-pushing in formal writing.

ClockworkUniverse

But obviously I can't do agenda-pushing in formal writing.

Unless your agenda regards the Oxford Comma, which is debated enough that anyone familiar enough with grammar to be correcting papers for it is familiar enough to know it's disputed.

(oxford comma ftw)

glennmagusharvey

Oh is that the name of the "comma before the final conjunction in a series"?

Yeah, I use that, and I support its use.

If it isn't used, the sentence sounds like it's inelegantly hurried to the finish line.

ClockworkUniverse

Yes. Also not using it can lead to confusion ("We invited the strippers, Barack Obama and George W. Bush").

My other main grammatical agenda is that split infinitives are valid, since the argument against them is based on Latin syntax. Language English syntax Latin not to be used is.

glennmagusharvey

^ i lol'd

DYRE

It just looks less stupid, and you can tell it's the end of a sentence usually by the capital letter at the start of the next word, or just from context otherwise.

There's also typically slightly more space at the end of a sentence vs. at the end of an abbreviation, though this isn't typically the case on the web and even in other kinds of documents there's no real guarantee that whoever typeset it did so properly.

glennmagusharvey

You mean the "leave two spaces between sentences" thing?

DYRE

No.  You aren't supposed to do that unless you're on a typewriter or similar (though I do by habit anyway because that's how I was taught).  But generally text is supposed to be rendered in such a way that the space in between sentences is greater than the space in between words.  But abbreviations just get the regular amount of space for a word after them.  You don't really have control over that with HTML or in Word or similar, but you do if you're using LaTeX or probably other typesetting systems.

Central Avenue

Also, if it really bothers you that much, 90% of the sentences where you'll encounter this can be rewritten to avoid it.

"The dealmaking was led by U.S. negotiators."

Stormtroper

My other main grammatical agenda is that split infinitives are valid, since the argument against them is based on Latin syntax. Language English syntax Latin not to be used is.

That's something of an urban myth, at least according to Wikipedia. It says it was based on people simply not doing it back then (and that it didn't use to be a big deal anyways).

Nyktos

Also not using it can lead to confusion ("We invited the strippers, Barack Obama and George W. Bush").

I use the Oxford comma, but using it can lead to the same kind of ambiguity. (Suppose there's only one stripper for instance.)

glennmagusharvey

Then use parentheses or dashes.

Nyktos

Either version can be trivially made not-ambiguous by reordering the list.