I've just been pulled up by a pedant of my acquaintance

[TheMoistWorldOfSeptimusQuench]

For putting a full stop in front of Mr. and Mrs.

I thought that, because they were abbreviations, one should use a full stop to indicate the missing letters? I'm sure this was how I was taught at my crappy comprehensive school...

I know many people don't use the full stop anymore, and to do so may seem antiquated, but surely this way is correct?

Please tell me I'm right so I can be as smug as he is when pointing out my errors

And how about Miss and Ms?

I think you only put the full stop when the last letter of the abbreviation is not the same as the last letter of the full word.

So you don't for Mr (Mister) or Mrs (Mistress) or Dr (Doctor) but you do for Rev. (Reverend).

Not sure if that's right though.

That's pretty much it. Loads of stuff here.

Note this is British usage - if you're an American, you'd probably put in the stop.

Oh no...

An Americanism?

French also use a dot I think.

In French the rule wolves described applies. I didn't realise the same rule applied in English, though!

But in French, its M. for Monsieur, so the full stop denotes missing letters, but Mme. for Madame, so the last letter is there but they still use a full stop.

Or am I wrong again?

No, that's not right, wolves - Mr. and Mrs. are the correct ways of writing them, but these days, hardly anyone does.

It does make yo ua pedant, and that's gooood thing

Grimma - it seems these days, that a lot of rules are still tightly adhered to by the Americans, but that it has fallen out of usage in Brit. English.

It's daft, really.
Y ouonly have to look at older books to see that we used to put . too.

Nickel, I think I love you

Can you link to any hard evidence that I can refer my critic to? I can't find anything.

And I agree with your remark about old books - didn't Jane Austen, the Brontes and so on use the full stop?

yes, i'm sure they did.

Penguin black classic of great expectations (charles Dickens obv):

random page: 173:
Mr. Wemmick
MR. POCKET, JUN.,

from what i have here in the shop.

Think of the waste of ink over the years!

Grimma, that's actually a really relevant point. One of the (many. Oh dear) things I've read about this today cited the introduction of typewriters, wartime austerity, and the need for economy of ink, as a reason for the dropping of the previously widely used .
I can't see that it would save that much ink, but I read it on the internet, so it must be true.

MoistWorld, in French, Mme is not followed by a full stop. The French rules are in line with those described by wolves.

I cannot find anything on the internet that substantiates what Nickel states though. My findings match what wolves mentioned.

For putting a full stop in front of Mr. and Mrs.

Don't you mean AFTER Mr. and Mrs.?

I'm a copy-editor. What wolves wrote is correct. I quote from the Oxford Style Guide (aka New Hart's Rules).

2005, 10.2.1. p. 169
"Traditionally, abbreviations end in full points [i.e. full stops] while contractions do not, so that we have Jun.and Jr for Junior and Rev.and Revdfor Reverend. This rule is handy and is in general borne out, although there are some exceptions, for example st.(street) is often written with a point to avoid confusion with St for saint. Note that everyday titles like MrMrsand Dr, being contractions, are written without a point."

In other words, if the middle part of a word is missing it is a contraction, whereas when the end is missing it is an abbreviation. This accounts for the difference in how they are punctuated.

American usage, by contrast, requires a full stop in all cases. See Chicago Manual of Stylefor details.

End of discussion.

Thanks for the clarification, Darrow.

And in the modern world each extraneous . is yet another byte or so (depending on the encoding). Wasteful, those Americans

yes, but the internet doesn't know everything.

get a book.
it'll tell you that mr. and mrs. are perfectly acceptable, if old-fashioned now.
but correct.

mmm... I agree that information found on the internet is not always correct. However, considering the number of mistakes I find in books these days, I would not extrapolate any rule from anecdotal evidence found in books.

Unless Darrow has made up her quote from the Oxford Style Guide , I would accept the rules stated there as the ones we should ideally abide by.

okay.
But i stand by my historical evidence.