I was reviewing an English text as an exercise, English not being my mother tongue, and I came to this sentence:
(...) with the two other articles that conclude several things about customers e.g.. It is (...)
Note the double periods at the end of the sentence. Now I've got a gut feeling that this isn't right, but I can't find any rules about it. Is it even 'allowed' to put 'e.g.' at the end of a sentence, where something like 'etc.' would suffice?
First: No.
"E.g." is the abbreviated Latin phrase "exempli gratia," and it is used in place of "for example."
"E.g." is used to introduce a set of examples, which mean it needs to be followed by the examples. It cannot be correctly used to mean "et cetera," or "etc."
Here is a correct example using "e.g.": I like most flavors of ice cream, e.g., chocolate, vanilla, raspberry.
(Notice that "e.g." is followed by a comma.)
Regarding the comma. The comma is required. For reference, take a look at #48 common bug from the writing labs at Columbia University: http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/etc/writing-bugs.html. We also see this comma espoused by style guides, e.g., the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) and the American Psychological Association (APA) style guides.
Regarding using "e.g." at the end of the sentence, note that I wrote that it is used to introduce examples, which means it cannot go at the end of the sentence.
If you read e.g. (exempli gratia) as a general replacement for for example then you might in theory be prepared to use it at the end of a sentence if you would use for example there. In that case, ending "e.g.." would be correct.
Personally I would only ever use e.g. before the example(s). I would not put a comma after it in the way David Bowman would, though I might sometimes put a colon if I was giving a complicated list of examples separated by semi-colons; that is a matter of personal style.
E.g. stands for the Latin exempli gratia and means for instance. So it can never replace etc., which stands for et cetera and means and the rest.
- A comma may or may not follow e.g.. For example: In some sports (e.g. soccer, hockey) there is an offside rule. Female marsupials (e.g., kangaroos, opossums) have a pouch.
Therefore, either the sentence made a mistake and used e.g. instead of etc., or it placed e.g. in a rare position (at the end of the sentence). After further discussion it appears that the first option is more likely. in this case, the following would be appropriate:
(...) with the two other articles that conclude several things about customers etc.
Note that it does not have two periods.
Though it is unusual for e.g. to come at the end of a sentence, I have never heard that usage disallowed. Wherever one would write for example, one could just as well write e.g., as far as I have ever seen. As for the double periods, it is usual to drop the period when e.g. or etc. comes before a full stop, but when it comes before anything else, the period is retained. (See the link above for examples.)
Yes, 'e.g.' and 'etc.' have nothing to do with each other. I do feel it’s a pity that exempli gratia (e.g.) can only introduce the example(s), when in normal spoken English one often hears a compound sentence with the second clause beginning with the example and then, “(comma) for example.” at the end of the sentence. It’s too bad, in other words, that we can’t write e.g. in place of “for instance” or “for example” when it’s written at the end of the sentence.
I don’t think that it’s poor grammar to say (out loud) the following: ‘There are many holidays observed at my workplace; Ramadan and Chinese New Year, for example.’ But is it poor grammar to write it as such? I don’t know.
