1

I just came across this sentence:

...is expected to take five weeks to repair, according to Aurizon Holdings Ltd. Prices more than doubled last year, topping $300 a ton...

As I'm sure most people do, I come across situations like this one on an almost daily basis, and despite this it almost always throws me off. Because I am so used to the single full stop after "Ltd", "Co" etc. (pardon that pun?) simply representing a shortening of the words "Limited" and "Company", I naturally continue to read at the same pace, without noticing that a new sentence has in fact started, indicated by the capital letter. (In this case the capital "P" on "Prices".) I have to retrace the word.

Is this end-of-a-sentence behaviour simply convention, thus rendering it grammatically correct to rewrite this sentence as

...is expected to take five weeks to repair, according to Aurizon Holdings Ltd.. Prices more than doubled last year, topping $300 a ton...

This would save me an annoyance! How about everyone else?

The reason I think it would be correct is simple: We use the first full stop to indicate the shortening of the word, and the second to indicate that we are ending the sentence.

ODP
  • 944
  • I believe in typesetting some styling guidelines advise double spacing between sentences, which can make parsing them easier. – Gary Apr 04 '17 at 09:23
  • 1
    From what I know about punctuation, the two periods (or full stops) would not be grammatically correct. There's also an older post that answers the same question, but my rep is too low to comment, so adding it here as an answer: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/8382/when-etc-is-at-the-end-of-a-phrase-do-you-place-a-period-after-it (Mods please change this to a comment if you can) – Krostd Apr 04 '17 at 09:31
  • Although books have been written about that, neither grammar nor typography has any rule that would stop you from dropping the 'Ltd" altogether and using simply Aurizon Holdings Ltd.

    It's highly unlikely your jurisdiction has a law against abbreviating a company name like that…

     – Robbie Goodwin Apr 18 '17 at 15:42

0 Answers0