Boring but is is Dr Brown or Dr. Brown

[winkywinkola]

I always thought it was Dr. Brown. Has the full stop been dropped in modern times and is both acceptable?

In American English, you always use the period/full stop as you also do in Mr., Mrs., etc. I think it's usually omitted in British English.

Apparently you don't use a full stop if the abbreviation is made up of the first and last letters of the original word.

I've always used one, I'm sure we were taught to at school!

You learn something every day!

As Dunedin says the convention in UK English is for Dr, Mr etc. whereas in American English they use Dr., Mr.

You are wrong about one thing, OP: it's not boring, this is meat and drink to Pedants' Corner.

I suspect like eg and ie, the non punctuated form will win out, as it's far less hassle to type on a smartphone!

There's definitely a logic to having no full stop if the abbreviation ends with the same letter as the original word, so we can excuse ourselves for not using one. And here's a thing- "Mrs" is the only abbreviation that I can think of (though I haven't thought very hard about it to be honest) that doesn't have an original word. Well it does, but it's "mistress", as it is for "miss", so assuming the abbreviations mean different things, they can't both be short for the same word, and "Mrs" would appear to be an orphaned abbreviation.

Prism, your post is confusing to me. Mrs predates Miss (I think). They are both abbreviations for mistress; Mrs is actually a contraction of mistress. The distinction between one for married women and one for unmarried women happened after the contraction came into use. Why is Mrs. the orphan?

Fair point, but I would have thought that more recently the whole word "mistress" would only be used (if at all, when not in the sense of a woman someone is having an affair with) of an unmarried woman, hence my theory that "Mrs" is effectively left as a sort of word in itself. I could be completely wrong about that, but the fact remains that two abbreviations for the same word mean different things, which is odd.

Well, you do still hear the phrase "mistress of the house" sometimes, which harkens back to the original meaning. I do agree that, to some extent, "Mrs" has become its own word, especially considering that it is often rendered in dialogue, etc. as "Missus." I still cling to the notion that it is an abbreviation because, as a feminist, I think it strengthens the case to use "Ms."

I completely agree. And it never ceases to amaze me that the French get away with having the same word for "wife" and "woman".

In Arabic they have the same word for 'woman' and 'house'

Good grief. That probably explains a lot, but I'm not sure exactly which lot.

They would argue that it means that the woman is in charge of the home. As I understand it, the woman is responsible for the decor, decisions about new sofas, etc. . The man is presumably responsible for everything else in life.