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When not used as a polite closing, are "Thanks" and "Thank you" sentences ending with a period? "Thanks. I appreciate your effort." "Thank you, Kevin. I will be in touch soon."

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Yes. What makes you think otherwise? – Irene Jan 7 '12 at 16:40
It seems like a legitimate question to me. – xpda Jan 8 '12 at 5:32

closed as not a real question by Mehper C. Palavuzlar, Irene, Barrie England, Hugo, simchona♦ Jan 7 '12 at 23:16

It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form. For help clarifying this question so that it can be reopened, see the FAQ.

3 Answers

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Personally, I would use an exclamation point (e.g., Thank you, Elizabeth!), but it appears that I'm in the minority. By far, most people seem to use a period. Here's a relevant corpus search (Note: the numbers are representative, not exact. Click on the punctuation marks to see examples of use.)

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Unfortunately, you can't tell from the corpus how many of these are 'used as a polite closing' in OPs words. I suspect the majority. – TimLymington Jan 8 '12 at 12:02
up vote 1 down vote

Grammatically, 'Thanks' is as much a sentence as 'Yes' or 'Goodbye'; but, as you suspected, it is unusual to put a full stop after it when followed by a related sentence. Personally, I would put a comma in your first example and a semicolon in the second; but only because of the close relation of the meanings, and it would be the same if you expanded Thanks to Thank you.

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up vote 4 down vote

"Thank you" is a sentence with an implied "I" or "We", as in "(I) thank you."

"Thanks" is a shortened form of "thank you", but you can use it as if it has an implied "You have my" or "I offer my", as in "(You have my) thanks."

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