16

When I said

"in my field, people earn triple in the US. for the same work in China."

a native speaker told me I should have got rid of that ".", is it a more modern style to refer to America?

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JJJohn
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    If you used the full stop (period) because it's an abbreviation, you should have put one after both letters (U.S.) However, it's not necessary to use them at all; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_stop#After_initials (scroll down to Acronyms and initialisms). – Kate Bunting May 21 '20 at 10:02
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    Nitpick: Referring to the US as America is like referring to China as "Asia" ;) – ljrk May 23 '20 at 10:45

1 Answers1

38

"US." is wrong.

Initialisms are either written with full-stops (periods) between every letter or not at all:

  • The U.S.A.
  • The USA

Shortenings are are abbreviations in which the end of the word has been dropped. These are written with one full stop at the end:

  • Approx. (approximately)
  • Esp. (especially)

I can see why you would think "the US" is an abbreviation (of "USA"), but really it is an initialism in its own right. As such, it should either have a full-stop after every letter, or none:

The US
or
The U.S.

Note this article about the US Military which uses both options for an initialism. The headline has NO marks ("The US Military") but the body of the article does use marks ("the U.S. Military").

Astralbee
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