• TheTechnician27@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    43
    ·
    1 day ago

    I won’t dog on them since the context implies this is ESL, but seeing “etc.” punctuated as though it’s an acronym is unholy.

    • grue@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      1 day ago

      If their first language is a Romance language it still isn’t an excuse, because “etc” comes from the Latin.

      • lad@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        12 hours ago

        But punctuation rules might be very different, e.g. in Spanish ordinal numerals are supposed to have a dot to denote that it’s a contraction: 1.º

        Nowadays this seems to die down, but it still is in the rules:

        Entre el número y la letra volada debe haber un punto.

        There must be a period between the number and the superscript letter.

        https://www.rae.es/buen-uso-español/los-ordinales

        • grue@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          11 hours ago

          Do any of those languages actually have a rule that you’re supposed to put a dot in the middle of “et,” though? It’d be pretty weird if they did because “et” is one word…

          “e.t.c.” makes about as much sense as “a.n.d. other things.”

          (At least the old-fashioned English way of doing it, with a ligature connecting the e and t like so: “&c” was somewhat reasonable.)