#92763
01/21/2003 5:27 PM
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Joined: Dec 2002
Posts: 122
member
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why do you always give a dot after dr? is it a rule? O_o
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#92764
01/21/2003 5:36 PM
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Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 5
stranger
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stranger
Joined: Jan 2003
Posts: 5 |
Although technically speaking, Dr. is a contraction of Doctor, and as a contraction would not merit a period at the end, in American English we treat them (Dr., Mr., and a few others) as if they were abbreviations, which do call for a period at the end. Other English-speaking nations forego the period at the end with no loss of understanding. Probably historical reasons for all of this.
davy jones
davy jones
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#92765
01/21/2003 5:42 PM
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Joined: Dec 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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So if it's a contraction how come it isn't D'r?
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#92766
01/21/2003 6:04 PM
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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So if it's a contraction how come it isn't D'r?
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#92767
01/21/2003 6:17 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Here's what my dictionary gives for dr:
dr
1 debit
2 debtor
3 drachma(s)
4 dram(s)
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#92768
01/21/2003 6:20 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dr or Dr.
1 Doctor
2 Drive
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#92769
01/21/2003 6:33 PM
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Carpal Tunnel
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Way I heard it, Brits and some others don't end an abbreviation with the symbol shown as . if the abbreviation ends with the same letter as the unabbreviated form. This is a little too subtle for USns.
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#92770
01/21/2003 6:54 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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#92771
01/21/2003 7:23 PM
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Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I know it's a full stop when it fully stops a sentence, wasn't sure if they still call it that when it's stopping an abbreviation. Doesn't seem like that's quite full. Just sort of a partial stop or a hesitation.
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#92772
01/21/2003 7:43 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I just discovered that my dictionary has "stop" divided into three parts, The ninth
definition is second part is:
9 [Chiefly Brit.] to insert punctuation marks in
So, what are commas, colons, and semi-colons in UK?
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#92773
01/21/2003 9:43 PM
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Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526
veteran
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veteran
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and here I thought dr was the derivative position vector.
As the nerds in Bart Simpson's gifted class said, "r dr r."
k
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#92774
01/21/2003 11:25 PM
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6,511
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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So, what are commas, colons, and semi-colons in UK?
demiquavers, quavers and semidemiquavers, natürlich.
preëmptive strike: this is not in the right order, logically, but it sounds better this way. Get a life.... :-|
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#92775
01/21/2003 11:25 PM
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 167
member
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member
Joined: Jul 2000
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I thought the rule was simple: that if the abbreviation is formed by the elision of letters within the word, there is no ".": if it's formed by missing letters off the end, then you do use a "." (Just don'task what happens if you do both.)
jj
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#92776
01/22/2003 1:34 AM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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I have never before heard of such a rule. It appears to be more honored in the breach than in the
observance. Even on those occasions when I have seen "Mr" or "Mrs" without the "." it appeared to
be an error. I think the use of the "." is desirable after all abbreviations.
From my dictionary: note that abbreviation for "cotangent" does not require a "."
abbreviation
n.
1 a making shorter
2 the fact or state of being made shorter
3 a shortened form of a word or phrase, as N.Y. for New York, Mr. for Mister, lb. for pound, ctn for cotangent
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#92777
01/22/2003 11:05 AM
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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more honored in the breach
Or in Britlands
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#92778
01/22/2003 12:24 PM
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Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 2,204
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 2,204 |
Several transpondian references to deal with here: 1) dr (debtor), Dr (Doctor), with or without a "."The rule of which Dr Bill has not heard used to be quite firmly the case over here, but is not so any more. We use either form - with or without "." - and no-one comments; not even if one isn't consistent. However, words that have had bits lopped off to form the abbrev. should have the "." B) What do we call "."? Full stop - whether it is at the end of a sentence or after an abbrev. There is no particular justification for this - it's just the way most of us do it. Some people have started to call it "period" but that ain't too common, yet. Þ) comma, semi-colon, colon comma, semi-colon, colon But " !" is almost always called "exclamation mark" and " ?" is a "question mark". I think that's all for now!
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#92779
01/22/2003 1:55 PM
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Joined: Dec 2002
Posts: 122
member
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member
Joined: Dec 2002
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>Brits and some others
well, i was asking about it because poles are "some others" :P
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#92780
01/22/2003 2:03 PM
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Joined: Feb 2002
Posts: 322
enthusiast
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enthusiast
Joined: Feb 2002
Posts: 322 |
I think the use of the "." is desirable after all abbreviations.
A lot of people seem to think that Ms is an abbreviation, and put a stop after it.
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#92781
01/22/2003 2:10 PM
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296
Carpal Tunnel
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#92782
01/22/2003 2:55 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,156
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,156 |
ctn for cotangent
Typo, dr bill? I've never seen anything but cot for cotangent.
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#92783
01/22/2003 3:14 PM
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Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526
veteran
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veteran
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I've seen it as both CTN and COT.
k
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#92784
01/22/2003 4:05 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,156
old hand
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old hand
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I honestly thought ctn was a mistake. Every math book I've ever seen uses cot not to mention pretty much every programming language. In fact I thought it might have reached the stage of not being language-specific. emanuela, are the usual trig function abbreviations in Italian sin, cos, tan, sec, csc, cot? Anyone else with math and another language background care to comment?
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#92785
01/22/2003 7:02 PM
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Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526
veteran
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veteran
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http://www.bartleby.com/61/87/C0788700.html[(Interestingly, I found a site that says that the maple programming language uses ctn and another that says it uses cot - perhaps both are correct and there's been a change. One Mathematica page explicitly says it's cot AND NOT ctn in that language.) And people are actually using the notation, too http://web.mit.edu/wwmath/calculus/differentiation/trig.html3http://www.mansd.org/memorial/mainsite/bb/other/nhoule/subdir/math.htmlWhat I'm not sure of is how this varies - regional, perhaps, or maybe subject area (perhaps engineers are more likely to use ctn over cot), or perhaps even temporally (in the process of changing). Similar notational deviance in a program language would be the use of the caret for exponentiation in some languages (fortran, pascal, vb, even quickbasic) vs double asterisk (perl, and the older versions of basic). [C, for example, doesn't even HAVE an exponentiation operator! It has the exp function, but no operator!] Another notational oddity is that for the natural logarithm. Commonly ln or LN denoted natural log, while log denoted "log base 10" unless otherwise stated. Nowadays, I've seen class notes and handouts, etc, in which log denotes "log base e" unless otherwise stated. On a slight, er, 'tangent,' one of the most curious terminological impasses I've encountered was the definition of a "Natural Number" which has changed over the years. When a woman first indicated in a usenet group that what she learned was that the naturals were the same as the integers I thought sure she was mistaken. The whole thread is at http://makeashorterlink.com/?H32121033k
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#92786
01/22/2003 7:32 PM
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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the naturals were the same as the integers
I thought it was non-negative integers.
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#92787
01/22/2003 8:23 PM
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Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 1,526
veteran
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veteran
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the naturals were the same as the integers
I thought it was non-negative integers.
Most of us (me included) learn a thing and think "well, that's the way it is." And we have a strong inclination (especially me) to think that opposing views are necessarily wrong.
What *I* learned:
N = Natural Numbers > 0
W = Whole Numbers >= 0
J = Integers = any non-fractional number
-- yet another thing ... sometimes they use the symbol I to mean integers
while my daughter is in pre-algebra in 7th grade and they use
J(n) to represent integers.
What this woman learned was that N = J. I was sure she was mistaken, but after spending a few hours in our company library I found a real math book that used her definition. (Which I meantion as the last post in that long thread of usenet posts I pointed to in my last message.)
Yet another weirdness which probably most awad readers are aware of, but don't think about very much. In 8th grade algebra, I learned that sqrt(-1) = i, but later, in engineering school, they used j for that.
It doesn't really matter how the terms are defined, so long as the terms are established early. Makes it difficult to interpret something when you come into it with no point of reference. That's obviously why they try to standardize some things.
k
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#92788
01/22/2003 8:29 PM
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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I guess the only real contenders are the positive numbers (the orthodox view) and the non-negative numbers (the heretical view). One site I looked at suggested dropping the term completely; there were enough heretics running around that it was best just to say positive or non-negative or whatever you meant.
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#92789
01/22/2003 8:51 PM
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Joined: Dec 2002
Posts: 122
member
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member
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>I've never seen anything but cot for cotangent
i have :P -ctg
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#92790
01/23/2003 9:19 AM
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 144
member
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member
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The way I was taught when I was learning to type was that it depended on the form of punctuation you were using.
If you were using 'closed punctuation' (considered old-fashioned)you would put a full stop after every abbreviation and initial, so...
Dr. A. N. Other
And when writing you would not leave a clear line between paragraphs, but would instead indent the first line of the paragraph by five spaces (1 tab stop).
This produced a fairly dense, cluttered page of type.
In 'open punctuation' you omitted full stops for abbreviations and initials...
Dr A N Other
and simply left a clear line between paragraphs instead of indenting the first line.
This produced a much cleaner page of type that was easier on the eye.
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#92791
01/23/2003 11:19 AM
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Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 1,624
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 1,624 |
Interesting this topic should come up. I was recently reading a letter written by my grandmother. She was an appallingly lazy writer (I always wondered where that came from) and she abbreviated damned near every second word which made the letter rather hard to read. Frustratingly, she reduced names to R. and P. and what have you. Can't phone her and ask her now.
But, getting to the point, she put a full stop after every single one of those contractions and abbreviations. Looks pretty weird to moi, and I can be pretty pedantic!
- Pfranz
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#92792
01/23/2003 11:34 AM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,156
old hand
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old hand
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The i vs. j thing for imaginary numbers is usually an engineering/physics divide. I was told it was because engineers have a silly  habit of using i for current and since you use imaginary numbers in decribing current and voltage in circuits, two different uses for the same letter would be confusing. When I took real analysis (a hardcore math course in which we started by proving 2 > 1 and ended the year eight months later proving how to do calculus) we had natural numbers (N), that is, the "counting numbers" 0, 1, 2, 3,..., integers (...,-3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3...) (symbolized by Z - why has no one else mentioned Z?), rational numbers (Q) (any number that can be written as the quotient of two integers), irrational numbers (I, I think) (any number that CAN'T be written as the quotient of two integers), real numbers (R) (rational and irrational together), and complex numbers (C) which included all the others. Note that for all of those the symbol is not just the letter but the funny letter with an extra bar which is completely unreproducible outside of TeX. (Having said that, maybe I'll make a little TeX file and post it somewhere so you can see what I mean. Give me an hour or two...I'm supposed to be working!) Anyway, the naming is probably not so important as knowing what differentiates one group from another, what properties make one group different from the other. emanuela could probably give us some definitive definitions on what's current in the "real math" world (rather than the bizarre world of the inconsistent drivel they teach kids in school - all you have to do is change provinces and the natural numbers could take on a whole different meaning - they should get their act together!).
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#92793
01/23/2003 8:32 PM
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Joined: Feb 2002
Posts: 833
old hand
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old hand
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I think the use of the "." is desirable after all abbreviations.
I don't. (just weighing in with my two cents' worth)
Didn't I see it here - the article, I think it was by Steve Martin, that was carefully constructed so as to use only one full stop in the punctuation of the entire piece? the premise being that the full stop is becoming an endangered species and that publishers of all kinds of printed materials are rationing its use? Just as this post of mine uses only one full stop that isn't recycled, in case you hadn't noticed!
Save the full stop! (or period, some calls it)
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#92794
01/23/2003 8:40 PM
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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carefully constructed so as to use only one full stop in the punctuation of the entire piece
He kind of cheated, as I remember, stringing three periods together and calling them an ellipsis.
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#92795
01/23/2003 8:44 PM
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Joined: Feb 2002
Posts: 833
old hand
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old hand
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He kind of cheated
true...but they WERE an ellipsis, so perhaps he can be forgiven...! After all, we mostly call them periods on their own - but if there are three of them together (or four), it's easier to call them "an ellipsis," rather than "three [or four] periods strung together" - yes?
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#92796
01/24/2003 12:09 AM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,156
old hand
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old hand
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An ellipsis and three periods are different creatures to a typesetter. Or so TeX would have you believe.
How can it be humanly possible that I have had to mention TeX twice in one day now? Strange.
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#92797
01/24/2003 8:46 PM
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Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 1,624
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jun 2002
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An ellipsis and three periods are different creatures to a typesetter. Or so TeX would have you believe.
Yes they are two different things. The ellipsis is a lighter weight than the full stop and the spacing of the three dots is equal (from memory) to one em wide in the same font.
- Pfranz
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#92798
01/27/2003 7:56 PM
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Lessee:
... three periods (full stops)
… ellipsis
m m (duh!)
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#92799
01/27/2003 7:58 PM
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6,511
Carpal Tunnel
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Whatcha duhing about this time, Faldage?
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#92800
01/27/2003 8:04 PM
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
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I just knew that three dots was too much..
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#92801
01/27/2003 8:08 PM
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Joined: Dec 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Duhing that I had to point out that m was m.
Three dots was too much for what?
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#92802
01/27/2003 8:15 PM
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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So an ellipsis is three periods folowed by climacteric
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