Fandom Grammar

This past January, over at Vulture (which is an online arm of New York Magazine), columnist Kathryn Schulz compiled a list of The 5 Best Punctuation Marks in Literature. I'm partial to punctuation myself, especially the semicolon, so I was curious about which marks Schulz favored. It turns out that her list wasn't exactly what I had imagined.

starwatcher307 asked us "How do you punctuate with abbreviations?"

One of the first things to get out of the way on this issue is whether you want to use periods (British usage: full stops) in your abbreviations. For a discussion about how to decide whether to use periods in an abbreviation, see our earlier article.

If the abbreviation in question is something like NCIS or CIA, without periods, you would follow normal rules of punctuation, as you would for the complete name of the organization. But if your abbreviation is, say, U.N. (United Nations) or Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy), things are a little more tricky - but only a little.