David Earl wrote: > St. is wrong anyway - strictly speaking there should only be a > period after an abbreviation where letters are omitted
Like so much English orthography, it's a matter of house style rather than a hard and fast rule. The most common house style in British English, at least, over the last 25 years has been pretty much what you say: the full stop is only used where the word wouldn't usually end with the final letter of the abbreviation. So Street->St, Saint->St (also), railway->rly, but abbreviation->abbr., acknolwedgement->ackn., and so on. That said, increasingly, the trend is to drop full stops altogether. I'd say that "Leics" and "Worcs" are now more often found than "Leics." and "Worcs.". "tbc" is certainly more common than "t.b.c.". I _think_ Rev is rapidly becoming as common as Rev., but abbr. and ackn. seem to be hanging on... for now. cheers Richard -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/Apostrophist-corrects-punctuation-on-street-signs-tp26302219p26304352.html Sent from the OpenStreetMap - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
