Unsupported titles/`period`

The periodos of Aristophanes of Byzantium, ca. 200 BCE. Originally there were three dots: ⟨·⟩ at mid height (the comma), ⟨.⟩ at the baseline (the colon), and ⟨˙⟩ at capital height (the periodos). When minuscule writing became common, it proved difficult to make a three-way height distinction, and only the periodos was retained, though it shifted to the baseline.

Punctuation mark

. (English name full stop or period)

Indicates the end of a sentence or passage of text.
Marks the end of an abbreviated word.
etc. ― et cetera

Mr J. Smith
Separates a number or letter from an item in a list.
A. New York, B. London, C. Paris.

a. New York, b. London, c. Paris.

1. New York, 2. London, 3. Paris.

I. New York, II. London, III. Paris.
(informal) Used between words to indicate staccato speech with emphasis laid on every word.
I. Don’t. Wanna. Hear.
Used at the end of numerals.
1. Indicates ordinal numerals.
  4., IV. ― fourth
2. (obsolete) Indicates cardinal numbers.
  100. ― one hundred
(IPA) Indicates a syllable break.
Used in numbered section or subsection titles, separates the sections and subsections.
10.1.4.6 How to make a profit
10.1.4.7 How to keep your profit
Used in numbered images, illustrations, maps, graphs, etc.
Map 1.4 Distribution of tigers in Africa
Map 1.5 Distribution of elephants in Africa
Used repeatedly in the table of contents of a book to separate the name of a chapter, section, image, etc., from the page number where it is found.
Introduction..................................13
Chapter 1.....................................14
Chapter 2.....................................19
(Australian rules football) Used to separate a team’s number of goals from its number of behinds, and sometimes from its total score.
Brisbane Lions 20.14 (134) defeated Collingwood 12.12 (84)

Brisbane Lions 20.14.134 defeated Collingwood 12.12.84

Usage notes

In English, the symbol . has various names, used in different contexts:

To signify the end of a sentence: period or full stop.
- My name is John. — My name is John period (US) or My name is John full stop (UK)
For use as a decimal separator: point.
- 3.45 — three point four five
For use of a thousand separator: — (not pronounced).
- There are 1.000 species left. — There are one thousand species left
In names in computing contexts (file-names, domain-names, and so on): dot.
- john.smith@example.com — john dot smith at example dot com
To separate the chapter name from the page number: leader.
- Introduction..................................13

Quotations

For quotations using this term, see Citations:Unsupported titles/`period`.

Symbol

.

A separator used with numbers.
1. In some counting systems, sets off the decimal or fractional part of a number.
  Synonyms: (in other counting systems) ·; ,; ’
2. In some counting systems, separates groups of three consecutive digits.
  Synonyms: (in other counting systems) ] [ (space); ,; ٬; ’
4. Separates hours, minutes, and seconds when reporting 24-hour time.
  Synonym: :
  - 1986, D. P. Poppi, “Nitrogen transactions in the digestive tract of lambs exposed to the intestinal parasite, Trichostrongylus colubriformis”, in British Journal of Nutrition, volume 55, number 3 (in English), page 593:
    Basically 300 μCi ⁵¹CrCl₃ contained in 10 ml sterile saline was injected into the jugular vein and the radioactivity and protein concentration of the plasma determined in samples of blood withdrawn by vacupuncture at 09.00 hours each morning for the following 5 d.
  - 2004, Steve Moxon, “Storyline: Bev Gets Knotted”, in The Great Immigration Scandal (in English), Imprint Academic, →ISBN, page 195:
    At 12.30 in the afternoon – half-an-hour earlier and she could have been accused of perpetrating an April Fool’s swansong deception – Hughes stood up in the Commons, doughnutted by as ugly a bunch of sad or scowling Blair babes as you could gather.
  - 2005 December 16, “Online Style Guide - T”, in Times Online‎^[1] (in English), archived from the original on 13 February 2007:
    Use a point in expressing continental time - 01.55, 14.00 etc.
  - 2014, Steven Crook, Taiwan (Bradt Guides)‎^[2], 2nd edition (in English), →ISBN, →OCLC, page 328:
    Three ferries per day sail from Nangan to Xiju’s Qingfan Port and Dongju’s Mengao Harbour (departs 🕘︎ 07.00, 11.00 & 14.30; takes 50mins; NTD200 one-way).
(programming, computing, networking)
1. In various programming languages, the structure access operator.
  point.x ― the ‘x’ property of the ‘point’ variable
2. In various programming languages, the string concatenation operator.
  echo 'I am currently ' . myAge(1981) . ' old.';
3. In various operating systems, the current directory.
  ls . ― list the contents of the current directory
4. The class selector in CSS, which intends to format a class of an element. (A class can appear freely one or more times in a page, as opposed to the ID selector: #).
  div.quotedtext {font-style: italic}
5. A delimiter.
  1. Separates a file name from its extension.
    document.txt ― the file with the base name ‘document’ and the extension ‘txt’
  2. Separates the parts of the domain name of a website (including the subdomain and the top-level domain).
    en.wiktionary.org ― the Internet domain name with components ‘en’, ‘wiktionary’, and ‘org’
  3. Separates the parts of a version number.
    version 1.2.16
  4. Separates the parts of an IP address (IPv4).
    127.0.0.1 ― localhost
6. (regular expressions) Matches any single character.
(chat rooms, Twitter) Used to prefix a message to prevent it from being treated as a command.
.@Tim needs to fix this problem ASAP

―How do I leave the chatroom? ―./exit

Quotations

For quotations using this term, see Citations:Unsupported titles/`period`.

Letter

The letter E in Morse code.

A short signal, used to form Morse code text, together with - (a long signal).
Visual rendering of Morse code for E. (Latin)
Visual rendering of Morse code for Е. (Cyrillic)

Basque

Punctuation mark

.

Used to mark ordinal numbers, pronounced -garren.
Badirudi XX. [hogeigarren] mendean jaio zela. ― It seems like he/she was was born in the 20th century.

Etxe hau kaleko 5.a [bosgarrena] da. ― This is the fifth house in the street.

Usage notes

Used when writing numbers numerically, either with Arabic or Roman numerals. Spellings like *3garren (“third”) are nonstandard, hirugarren or 3. are used instead.
The ordinal for bat (“one”) is irregular. Thus, 1. (“first”) is pronounced lehen or lehenengo.
Case endings (if required) are written immediately after the dot (see the usage example above).