Full Stop: The Period

Full stop: They call it “Full stop” in British English and “period” in American English but the idea and usage of it is the same. This is probably the most known and obvious punctuation mark we all are aware of. The basic use of it is quite simple: whenever there is a logical end to a thought, a full stop is used to mark the end. But how often can one use a full stop? Is it okay to use very small sentences, maybe sometimes singular words as a full sentence and put a full stop? Let’s break all of this down in this article:

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Usage of the Full Stop

1. At the logical end of a sentence. Here are a few examples to explain this:

• “Before you go out, please wear a raincoat.”
• “My father is a carpenter in the suburbs of Mumbai.”
• “I want to cook butter paneer tonight for the guests coming to my house.”
• “Burma is the land of the Buddhists.”

2. A full stop is also used for a few abbreviated words. Abbreviations are full words that we shorten. Here are a few examples to explain this:

• “Please bring vegetables like carrots, okra, potatoes, onions, etc.”
• “I took a trip to South East Asia this summer and went to places like Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, etc.”
• “I wake up in the morning at 7 a.m to go to school.”
• “Mrs. Sharma has invited us all at their place for a birthday dinner tomorrow night.”
• “My mother has an M.A degree in English subject.”

Note: If an abbreviation comes at the end of a sentence, there is no need to add another full stop after the abbreviation as you can see in the first example in this pointer above.

3. We use full stops in the website address and email IDs. Here are a few examples to explain this:

• “Toppr is the best website for education. Go check us out at www.toppr.com.”
• “You can reach me at abc@gmail.com.”

More Applications

4. Full stops mark the end of a sentence and remember not to use it instead of a question mark or an exclamation mark. And sometimes, full stops are used after just one word. That happens when one crisp word describes the whole thought. Isn’t that amazing?

• “Good-bye.”
• “Stop.”
• “Come.”
• “Hello.”

5. How you heard of periods in numbers. Yes, as you must have imagined, they are your so-called decimal points like 10.43, 6.4%, and so on.

6. Full stops in ellipses: Ellipses are nothing but the many full stops you see at the end of a sentence that is an indication of some thought processing left to be done by the reader. These are quite interesting to use and it also gets overused in unnecessary places sometimes. We can see the use and misuse here. Here are a few examples to explain this:

• “Nature always keeps giving, and we humans just keep taking…”
• “If only the dogs could talk…”
• “Just when we think we have everything in control, life keeps reminding us that it’s all about being okay with not being in control instead…”

That sums up all we had to talk about the famous full stop mark. You will also hear people emphasize this way:”I am not going to the summer camp. Period.” This means that they are not open to further discussions on the topic and the period marked the end of the conversation. Try doing it to someone today. Have fun with your English grammar.