JFrost8401(a)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