[WikiEN-l] capitalisation

[Ray Saintonge]

JFrost8401 at aol.com wrote:

> Another much less controversial difference seems to be the different 
> use  of the full stop/period in abbreviations. US tends to retain the 
> period in say St. Mary , or J. R. R. Tolkien, whereas many non-US 
> users would drop the dot.
>
> Jim

Aarrggh!  This is a whole different issue.  I hope we can keep it 
separate from capitalization..

I would add that Canadian usage is trending toward St-Mary (with a 
hyphen) in response to developing a common usage for French and English. 
 What you say about Tolkien is not accurate.  Fowler distinguishes 
between abbreviations and contractions, and retains the full stop in 
abbreviations.  In the acknowledgements for the third edition there is a 
long list of names, many with initials instead of given names thus with 
the punctuation as it appears there:  "Mr F. R. le P. Warner, Professor 
Emer. Hugh E. Wilkinson"

Ec