A full stop 'rule' I never knew before
I am referring to where a writer should place a full stop. It is what the Americans, for some strange reason, call a 'period'. In my world, a period is something very different and no, it's not what you might think I am going to say. A period is a length of time. Full stop.
Having probably totally confused everyone now, here is what I mean about placing the full stop where I have always believed it to go; outside of a closed parenthesis (also mistakenly known as a bracket) at the end of a sentence.
Every time I have read anything, be it a book, a newspaper report, a magazine article and so on, I have got very fidgety and uncomfortable when I see a full stop enclosed within parentheses (like this.) and it usually gives me a flashback to my school years when I was always told that the full stop went outside of the parentheses (like this).
Very recently, though, I 'discovered' that it is apparently okay to place a full stop inside parentheses but only if a whole sentence is tucked inside. (So, a sentence like this, that is totally enclosed inside parentheses can be finished off with the full stop inside, thus.) Not only that but, a further full stop is not seemingly required to close off such a sentence (as can be seen at the end of the last sentence and the start of this sentence).
Yet, a lot of the time, writers have been known to abuse this by enclosing a full stop inside a closing parenthesis at the end of a sentence, even though that sentence started outside of parentheses. According to the rule governing this anomaly, this is wrong, but that doesn't seem to stop people from annoyingly doing it nonetheless.
It was always my belief and learning that a full stop must without exception appear outside a closing parenthesis, whether the whole or part of a sentence is encased within, in order to 'close off' such a sentence. It now turns out that either I may have been mis-taught all those years ago - or maybe that those writers who do it are wrong. However, I still believe that finishing a parenthesised sentence with a full stop inside the closing parenthesis looks plain butt ugly and absolutely wrong, whether a second full stop is placed outside of the closing parenthesis or not.
Whether it is me or those that do it who are in the wrong, it will not stop me from wincing every time I see a full stop inside of a closed parenthesis at the end of a sentence.
Trevor Mulligan