Definition
 The
full stop is used to show a strong pause.
It
is used at the end of a sentence - like
this one.
Examples
This is a very short sentence.
It happened suddenly in 1996.
There are two reasons for this (in my opinion).
USE
The
full stop is the strongest mark of punctuation.
The
stop is also used following many abbreviations.
Full
stops are used after a lot of
abbreviations:
But
you don't need full stops after titles, headings, or sub-headings:
Billy the Fish
The Lion King
Introduction
The
full stop isn't needed after titles:
| Dr |
[Doctor]
|
Mr |
[Mister]
|
| St |
[Street]
|
Ms |
[Miss]
|
Full
stops are not needed in the titles of organisations and
countries:
BBC
|
British Broadcasting Corporation
|
UNO
|
United Nations Organisation
|
USA
|
United States of America
|
The
full stop goes inside quotation marks but outside brackets:
You don't need
a full stop if a sentence ends with a question mark.
Is this question really necessary?
You don't need
a full stop if the sentence ends with an exclamation mark.
Look
closely at those last two examples. You'll see that the full stop
is part of the exclamation and the question mark. |
