Is it written Mr. (or Mrs. for that matter)- with a dot at the end or Mr (or Mrs)?

Question

Im in the UK and i thought we should put a dot at the end of Mr or Mrs but i keep receiving emails without them!

Answer 1

In "proper" grammar, the . (dot) should be placed at the end of an abbreviated word to show that it is abbreviated.

So - Mr. Mrs. St. Ave. no. Dec. etc. a.m. p.m. e.g. and so on.

However, in less formal environments - emails, texts (txts.) it is common to leave out unnecessary punctuation marks - even sometimes ignore capitals and leave out some letters!

4 xample, in yr question u wrote Im instead of I'm and i instead of I .....

Who cares, as long as we can understand each other!

Answer 2

abbreviations that are formed by using the initial or first few letters of a word *should* really have a full stop after them.
like United States = U.S., or business = bus., or avenue = ave. (this is the only time you'll see a full stop and a comma together btw.)
when the abbreviation is made of the first and other letters, and the last letter of the word, it shouldn't have a full stop.
road = rd, mister = mr, mistress (NOT missus lol) = mrs,

doctor = dr (no stop) or doc. (with stop)

*ms* is a new-fangled invention, that doesn't *really* have a long version and tends to be written without the stop as though it were a word in it's own right.
here's a link:

http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/tta/wordpunc/wordpunc.htm#fs

i think that there are different conventions in different countries, though. which leads me on to...
this sort of thing is *just* convention. ie it is what is agreed by consensus, rather than a *rule* of grammar. it's *style*. and style changes...
eg i think that i would write USA, rather than U.S.A. nowadays. probably, because the abbreviation is common as the full title?
or, when writing the block address at the top of a letter, it used to be considered correct to put a comma at the end of each line. this is now seen as old-fashioned.

Answer 3

Emails don't tend to be written in 'proper' English. They are a more informal way of communicating. If you had received a letter through the post it would be different.

Mister should be abbreviated as Mr. with the Full Stop showing that some of the word has not been written.

Some Professors of the English Language believe that Emails and 'Txt speak' are slowly ruining the language as people tend to reduce words to the smallest component.

Grammar is another area which is suffering.

Is it 'cos I is Computer Literate?
I is believin dat lingo is changin ova da years but dere is nuffin I can do tho, blud!
Us in Britin, shood look afta hour eritage an dat means da lingo 2.
Namsayin?

Answer 4

Yes, there should be a dot. as in Mr. Mrs. except the Miss where there is no dot. Abbreviations should be written with a dot because that's how we know that it is abbreviated. Other examples are: Rev. Fr. Dr. Pres.

Answer 5

Since it is an abbreviation for Mister it should have a dot. Mr. Smith...
Same with Misses: Mrs. Doctor: Dr. etc.
People tend to get lazy and omit the dot...

Answer 6

Mr. and Mrs. both have periods. So do Rev., Fr., Dr., and a host of others.
It's because they're all abbreviations.
Interestingly enough, Mrs. no longer stands for anything. Mrs. used to stand for "mistress," however, through the years, the word "mistress" took on a completely different meaning than "a woman who is married" and came to mean "the special friend of the husband of the woman who is married."
Therefore, Mrs. is the only abbreviation in existence that does not have a long form.
Fun, huh?

Answer 7

You need a full stop after an abbreviation that doesn't end with the last letter of the word, so Prof. (short for Professor) but not after an abbreviation that does, so Mr (for Mister) or Mrs (short for Mistress).

Answer 8

Really there shoud be a dot after the Mr or Mrs but I think most people dont know this so that is why they dont do it.

Answer 9

No dot. If you abbreviate something and use the last letter, there's no need for a dot, such as with Rd for road, whereas with 'etc.' you need a dot because you don't use the final letter, 'a'. So, with 'nos' for numbers, there's no dot, but with just one number, 'no.', there is.

I've seen Mr & Mrs written with a dot after, but this is an old-fashioned way - you'd see it in old novels - and these things tend to disappear over time, such as the dot after St for saint which generally isn't used in place-names anymore, such as Chalfont St Giles, no dot.

Edit: for your correspondents' information, the long version of Mr & Mrs is Mister and Missus. (Remember 101 Dalmations? The parent dogs were Pongo and Missus!)

Answer 10

I think so, yes. It should be with a dot - Mr. Mrs. The dot is referring to the missing letters.