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Example:

It's all about apples, oranges, bananas, etc.

VS.

It's all about apples, oranges, bananas, etc..

Update

What happens if the abbreviation is inside parentheses, do you place a dot after and before the closing parenthesis?

It's all about fruit (apples, bananas, etc.).

Mari-Lou A
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Shimmy Weitzhandler
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    I always avoid the awkwardness of this by writing "et cetera" in full sentence-finally. It doesn't look all that awkward, and it might have the pleasant side-effect of breaking people of the "exetera" habit. – Jon Purdy Jan 10 '11 at 17:40
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    @Jon, sorry for being rude, but I completely disagree, I personally think writing et cetera is nerdish and annoying. – Shimmy Weitzhandler Jan 10 '11 at 17:50
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    @Shimmy: Eh, doesn't bother me. I rarely use the phrase anyway, preferring to re-word. Why should it look "nerdish and annoying" anyway? Just that it's unabbreviated and less common? – Jon Purdy Jan 10 '11 at 17:52
  • @Jon, Actually it depends when. If you write a book and you have to be very official, then you're right, but when you want to write a description for something or anything else that has to be semi-official or less, I think et cetera is too long and verbose when you have the very known 'etc.' friend. and BTW, sorry for MY english... it's not my native language either... – Shimmy Weitzhandler Jan 10 '11 at 18:06
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    @Shimmy: That's fair. And your English is just fine: I wouldn't have known you're not a native speaker from just these comments. – Jon Purdy Jan 10 '11 at 18:11
  • If you'd like to help me improve my eng, kindly point out some my mistakes. thank you very much! – Shimmy Weitzhandler Jan 10 '11 at 18:27
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    @Jon I am a native english speaker, and I'm going to side with @Shimmy on this one. "Et cetera" seems to formal to me in most writing, and is rarely seen written out in full. Just as you don't see "et alii" in place of "et al." or "post meridiem" in place of "p.m." -- which, of course, would be even worse… ;-) – ghoppe Jan 10 '11 at 20:13
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    Please, if you cannot answer the question, then do not respond. Telling the OP to use "et cetera" is avoiding the question and does not help at all. –  Jan 11 '11 at 15:39
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    @jerimy: That's why I didn't post my comment as an answer...because it's not an answer. I was just sharing my own experience. – Jon Purdy Jan 19 '11 at 23:08
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    ...Or you can say, "and so on", which is the translation of "et cetera" into English, which is the language you are writing in after all. – Mateen Ulhaq Feb 14 '12 at 07:12
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    Auto-correct is an automaton. It does not understand English, it just does what it is told to. If you think you know better, you probably do. – Matt E. Эллен Mar 08 '12 at 09:14
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    @Jon I completely agree - I know that I, for one, occasionally use "id est" instead of i.e.. It's good for people to remember that "ie" and "eg" etc. are not words! – Benubird Mar 10 '12 at 14:02
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    @Benubird: why is that important, except from an aesthetic point of view? Everyone knows (approximately) that e.g. means "for example, and i.e. means "that is". Why would it matter if they don't know the Latin? In a sense "ie" and "eg" ARE words: strings of letters or sounds representing a meaningful concept. – naught101 May 02 '12 at 07:09
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    Four up votes and four close votes? Let's make up our minds. – Kris Oct 17 '12 at 05:12
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    @muntoo We're not writing in "English". We're writing in a strange bastardisation of Latin, Ancient Greek, French, German, etc. "Et cetera" is part of this language. – Sparhawk May 29 '14 at 10:35
  • @naught101 I agree and was just about post that for all practical purposes, ie and eg ARE words as is etc, abbreviated. Informally, at least, I tread it as a any other word when it comes to punctuation, and give it a comma only when it occurs mid-sentence. Same thing, but to a lesser extent, with eg and ie. Seeing et cetera written out, would likely be distracting in a most contexts. YMMV. – Nicole Nov 04 '15 at 02:15
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    Updating a question that was asked in 2011 in 2015 was not exactly ethical, but updating it a 2nd time in 2018 is out of line. Please ask your NEW question separately, by all means link it to this older one for context. – Mari-Lou A Feb 28 '18 at 18:06
  • @Mari-LouA I won't post it again since some of the answers include information for my update. Feel free to open a new question if it bothers you, and/or downvote my question if it will make you feel better. – Shimmy Weitzhandler Mar 01 '18 at 10:29
  • It's not my question. Why would I want to ask? If you want to know, it's adding a second new request to a 7-year-old question that bothers me, if you believe it is ethical and fair, go ahead and rollback the edit. I won't start a 'war". And downvoting a question that has earned 145 upvotes would be pointless. It wouldn't even scratch it, besides I don't think it is a bad question. – Mari-Lou A Mar 01 '18 at 10:32
  • @Mari-LouA OK nevermind. Let's just leave it as it is. – Shimmy Weitzhandler Mar 05 '18 at 04:16

7 Answers7

171

If etc. occurs at the end of a sentence, then you do not add another period.

It's all about apples, oranges, bananas, etc.

However, if etc. occurs at the end of a clause, you can add a comma or other punctuation mark after it.

I bought the apples, oranges, etc., but they were all rotten.

Grammar.ccc.com gives the following rule:

When an abbreviation with a period ends a sentence, that period will suffice to end the sentence.

Edwin Ashworth
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JSBձոգչ
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    My programmer side and my aesthetic side have been in a fight about this one for a long time. The first one said that now something is hanging in the air, but the other said it just didn't look right. Guess aesthetics win here. Thanks. – gligoran Jun 14 '14 at 08:47
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    Prior to the invention of the Linotype, typographers would follow the abbreviation with a period and narrow space if it occurred mid-sentence, or with a period and wide space if it appeared at the end, thus avoiding ambiguity except in the case where the period was the last thing on the line (an occurrence which people hand-setting type would try to avoid mid-paragraph whether the period marked an abbreviation, end of sentence, or both. Unfortunately, Linotype-compatible typesetting conventions have erased the distinction. – supercat Sep 12 '14 at 17:07
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    @Shimmy I think your update should be a new question. Your original question was too long ago. Now your updated question, which contains a new question, has gone unnoticed for over a year. I just happened to stumble across it from a Google search. – Brandin Nov 07 '16 at 20:59
  • @Brandin I think it's pointless. I'll instead change the title too, and I yet updated the question again... – Shimmy Weitzhandler Feb 28 '18 at 18:36
104

The correct form of your example:

It’s all about apples, oranges, bananas, etc.

Jack Lynch’s Guide to Grammar and Style states:

This one is simple enough: never double up periods. If a statement ends with “etc.” the period in the abbreviation does double duty, serving as the full stop to end the sentence. If, however, you need another mark of punctuation after an abbreviation, you can put it after the period. So:

  • This was her first trip to the U.S.
    (The period does double-duty, ending both the abbreviation and the sentence.)
  • Is this your first trip to the U.S.?
    (The period ends the abbreviation, but the question mark ends the sentence.)
  • On her first trip to the U.S., Kristina lost her passport.
    (The period ends the abbreviation, but the sentence keeps going after the comma.)

The only thing to remember: don't double the periods. Everything else is logical enough.

Shimmy Weitzhandler
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Jimi Oke
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    Tho aren't they wrong about including a period in the parenthesis? – Shimmy Weitzhandler May 01 '17 at 20:42
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    (No: https://english.stackexchange.com/a/11129/184025.) – shim Oct 11 '18 at 15:07
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    sigh Major thank you, Jimi. I have been saying, "etc.." or fully spelling it out as, "etcetera." for years. As a software developer who primarily uses languages with rigid syntax, it almost feels incorrect to me to close off the sentence without also explicitly closing off the abbreviation. Alas, I appear to be mistaken! Thank you for shedding light on this. – Spencer D Nov 03 '18 at 03:58
13

Note also that, when an abbreviation comes at the end of a sentence, only one full stop is written. You should never write two full stops in a row.

'Guide to Punctuation' by Larry Trask.

Barrie England
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    If you follow through on the Trask reference, you come to the recommendation 'The rule about using these Latin abbreviations [eg e.g., etc.] is very simple: don't use them.' - which would seem to trump the 'never write two full stops in a row' rule. Personally, I pick and choose amongst the self-appointed style gurus, and would only avoid ex-Latin abbreviations if the audience was especially fussy. I've found a style guide which recommends dropping full stops from abbreviations unless ambiguities would thus arise; this convention avoids the original problem and cuts punctuation clutter. – Edwin Ashworth Sep 17 '12 at 19:58
4

If is was not a question, then you would not need two periods at the end of the sentence, but you do seem to need the period before a question mark.

You might just use the full et cetera. Then you don't have to worry about the problem at all.

gam3
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    I just read the same thing in a Grammar Girl tip yesterday. I was a little surprised to read that. I've never written "... etc.?" but always "... etc?" Live and learn. Sigh. Well, no one has ever called me on that minor error, so I'll continue to make it. Some habits just aren't worth changing. –  Oct 17 '12 at 01:03
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    @BillFranke It's only an error if you get paid for fixing it. – StoneyB on hiatus Oct 17 '12 at 01:12
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    @StoneyB: Or if a journal editor or reviewer calls it an error and demands that I change it. I love it when non-native speakers and writers of English tell me, with the full authority of their PhD in microbiology behind them, that a sentence containing something like "... which meant that that hypothesis was incorrect ...": "This sentence ungrammatical. It have two 'that's." –  Oct 17 '12 at 01:20
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    @BillFranke "Make you a deal: I don't tell you how to sequence genomes, you don't tell me how to write." I can handle those guys. It's the lawyers I hate. – StoneyB on hiatus Oct 17 '12 at 01:28
  • @game3 Can you back up your claim with either reason (to show that your claimed rule flows from other conventions of English), or data (to show that this is in fact the convention that native speakers follow)? – iconoclast Oct 23 '12 at 13:52
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    http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/19434/how-to-deal-with-abbreviations-at-the-end-of-a-question – gam3 Nov 26 '12 at 23:52
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Rules, rules, rules! Who made that rule? It’s punctuation of a type that is just a style thing. If you want to double the stop, do so. You may be bucking the contemporary trend, but nobody will have any difficulty reading what you have written as a result. Most house styles are against it merely because it looks untidy on the page. That’s all.

David
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    yuo kan olso rite gramir mistaikes if ther ar no rulz – Shimmy Weitzhandler May 04 '20 at 16:04
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    @ShimmyWeitzhandler — Your comment seems to betray an inability to discriminate between spelling and punctuation, and suggests you confuse the two with grammar. I know what I am talking about when I refer to house styles, because I have had to follow many different ones in my career. As regards even standard punctuation, this has varied over the years. Compare that of Charles Dickens with Monica Dickens, for example. Facility in writing English involves understanding why you should or should not do something, or whether there is a choice and how to make it. Even children need to be told why. – David May 04 '20 at 16:33
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    Not kind to traditions but impeccable logic. – LPH Oct 08 '20 at 19:01
0

No, which I say because we just don't and I learned that we don't, but since references are desirable, here's what Grammar Girl has to say.

Green Grasso Holm
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You simply do not put another period after "etc." when it ends a sentence.

niamulbengali
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