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I'm sure everyone has seen this phrase at the bottom of many e-mail messages. My question is about the combination of punctuation and capitalization.

The capitalization of the first word makes me think this phrase was intended to be a complete sentence, but when we get to the end, there's no period, as you might expect when reading a mere fragment.

Is this widely considered wrong? It feels they are half in the water and half out.

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  • 5
    Aren't we showing some tetrapyloctomy here?
    – CesarGon
    Commented Aug 12, 2011 at 1:46
  • 7
    @CesarGon: I learned a new word today!
    – Mr. Shiny and New 安宇
    Commented Aug 12, 2011 at 2:11
  • 3
    I don't understand what is wrong with this question.
    – I. J. Kennedy
    Commented Sep 16, 2011 at 4:26
  • Minus eight and still an open question? I am uncertain of the problem here, actually, like I. J. Kennedy inquired. I don't have a cell phone (yet) and often forget if one should use 'iPhone' or 'IPhone', even though I see that pithy little fragment, such as it is, 'Sent from my iPhone', running across the bottom of email messages!
    – Ellie K
    Commented Dec 28, 2011 at 18:50

2 Answers 2

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The phrase Sent from my iPhone is a sentence fragment. It is capitalized, as other lonely sentence fragments are. I think of it as a "P.S." after a letter, telling the recipient from where the message was transmitted. The fact that it doesn't have a period matches this.

However, I don't think that it makes much of a difference how this phrase is capitalized or punctuated. It is used as a tagline at the end of messages, and it gets its point across as such.

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This is an example of the telegraphic style of writing. You see it a lot on signs, and this message is an advertising message, which is a kind of signage. You don't see periods on stop signs, do you?

Other signs:

     

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  • I think it's no coincidence that all those signs use all-caps. These phrases are not trying to be sentences. Nevertheless, thanks for your answer; I like the term telegraphic.
    – I. J. Kennedy
    Commented Aug 16, 2011 at 23:21

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