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Punctuation around abbreviations

When a sentence ends with an abbreviation, should there be two periods or one?

Welcome to ACME Inc. We are glad to have you on board.

Welcome to ACME Inc.. We are glad to have you on board.

I would assume that only one is appropriate because I've never seen two used (and it looks awful), but if so, does the period "belong" to the end of the sentence or the abbreviation? I ask because I came across this while writing HTML, and the last word needs to be a link, so I wasn't sure if the period belongs within it.

Welcome to ACME Inc. We are glad to have you on board.

Welcome to ACME Inc. We are glad to have you on board.

Welcome to ACME Inc.. We are glad to have you on board.

Usually a link should not include punctuation at the end of the sentence, but should include it as the end of an abbreviation in the middle or beginning of a sentence. Which of these links seem more appropriate?

If only one period is used, who "owns" the period: the abbreviation or the sentence?

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marked as duplicate by Robusto, RegDwighт♦ Jun 4 '11 at 16:40

This question has been asked before and already has an answer. If those answers do not fully address your question, please ask a new question.

1 Answer

up vote 8 down vote accepted

This pretty much explains who the period belongs to:

This one is simple enough: never double up periods. If a statement ends with “etc.” the period in the abbreviation does double duty, serving as the full stop to end the sentence. If, however, you need another mark of punctuation after an abbreviation, you can put it after the period

So, it really belongs to no one: it is shared. Your link would include the period.
N.B., emphasis added by me.

To ensure that there is only one period; taken from Wikipedia:

Abbreviations A full stop is used after some abbreviations.[3] If the abbreviation ends a declaratory sentence there is no additional full stop immediately following the full stop that ends the abbreviation (e.g., My name is Gabriel Gama, Jr.) This is called haplography. Logically there should be two full stops (one for the abbreviation, one for the sentence ending), but only one is conventionally written. In the case of an interrogative or exclamatory sentence ending with an abbreviation, a question or exclamation mark can still be added (e.g., Are you Gabriel Gama, Jr.?). [edit]

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The first example link surely seems more natural to me, but it's a bit tricky. For example, if the next sentence started with any capitalized word (proper noun for instance), it could appear that the sentence does not end with the abbreviated word, but continues. I found an answer to this on Yahoo answers but it was decorated with "lol"s, ascii art, stickers and glitter - so I didn't trust anything about it. Thanks for the better reference, the answers to the duplicate this was closed as didn't help too much. – Wesley Murch Jun 4 '11 at 19:50

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