By any other name

[magid]

[Poll #1546595]

Bonus question: Would it be useful to have distinct punctuation marks used only for URLs?

First: formal poll
Omer: 3₇

Comments

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

It's a "full stop" at the end of a sentence if I know that my audience is primarily non-North-Americans.

[magid.livejournal.com]

*nod*

I don't translate that as automatically as 'flat' or 'maths,' though.

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

I haven't had much cause to discuss those with overseas correspondents; but being in the computer-aided typography biz for over a decade, and having served on a W3C committee, I have had many chances to talk/write about punctuation.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I am obviously not nearly geeky enough.

[jaq.livejournal.com]

It's a 'point' in numbers, in English speaking locales at least.

It would probably be a 'dot' in other computing contexts, not just URLs. e.g. the common dots in URLs are in the domain name, and that can appear outside of a URL as well. </pedantic> Though there is an alternative which is that the dot is not pronounced at all.

[magid.livejournal.com]

It's 'point' in numbers informally here, too, though when the math textbooks are teaching kids how to read decimals, it's 'and' (as in "seven and thirty-six hundredths").

I didn't know that about other computing contexts (though I'd already decided that 'dot products' weren't relevant here, since that has a raised dot).

[cnoocy]

There are actually a lot of computing contexts for dots, such as object members in Java:

System.out.println(myObject.toString());

and string concatenation in perl:

print "You are " . $dist . " meters from " . $destination . "\n";

[currentlee.livejournal.com]

it's a "point" when it's in the middle of a number.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Point.

*grin*

Though sometimes it then becomes "and" (as in "ten and two tenths").

[currentlee.livejournal.com]

the "and" is in mixed numbers, not decimals.
::pokes out tongue::

[magid.livejournal.com]

Not in textbook land.
Informally, sure.

[treacle-well.livejournal.com]

Other than the URL thing, it's almost always a period--not just at the end of a sentence but at the end of abbreviations and such. But in filenames it's a dot before the extension, and I'd probably pronounce it dot if it appeared elsewhere in the filename also.

Now email addresses--I don't think that's the exact same thing as a URL, but when that punctuation is before the com or org or whatever, it's definitely a dot. I think I'd probably also pronounce it as dot if found elsewhere in the address; I think that because I was recently in a meeting where one person spelled out her email address. Our standard email is firstname.lastname@company.com and she pronounced the first "." as "period" and the last "." as "dot"; That "period" sounded weird to me.

ETA: just read comments. And agree that when expressing decimal numbers it's "point."

[magid.livejournal.com]

I'd mentally been lumping email addresses in with URLs. I hadn't thought about file extensions, but those feel similar to these as well.

[ceo]

At the end of a sentence: period.
In a number: point.
In other computing contexts: dot.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Now you've got me wondering whether this is easier for people to disambiguate than their/there/they're.

[jarel.livejournal.com]

Full stop, dot or point, depending ;)

[magid.livejournal.com]

As I said to Ceo, I wonder if the same people who have issues with there/their/they're would have trouble with this too.

[pling.livejournal.com]

Snap! :)

[spwebdesign.livejournal.com]

Why no "it depends on the situation/country you're in" option?

[magid.livejournal.com]

Because I didn't think of it?

I expect I'd've clicked the 2nd & 6th options if I weren't so pedantic...

[arfur]

It's "period" at the end of a sentence. I'd also use "period" with lists ("1. First item in my list" = "one period First..."), the localpart of an email address ("arthur period prokosch at pobox dot com").

It's "dot" in the middle of a URL, domain/hostname, or IP address. It's also "dot" when I spell an ellipsis ("from here ... to there" = "from here, dot dot dot, to there")

It's "point" for numbers ("4.23%" = "four point two three percent")

It's never "full stop" in my idiolect.

[cellio]

Period at the end of a sentence or when discussing punctuation (how meta :-) ). Dot in URLs, email addresses, and certain code constructs. Point in numbers.

"I sent mail to fred at example dot com to ask if, in the first line of section three point two, he meant for the period to go inside the quotes."

[electrictruffle.livejournal.com]

It is 'decimal' in aviation land, eg. three decimal one four fife niner two six fife (5 and 9 get changed to be more discernible from each other and the Germanic 'no').

But usually it is 'point' for me in numbers, 'dot' in URLish contexts, 'point' in paragraph numbering, and never 'full stop'.

-ETR

P.S. Thanks for the bunny!

[gingicat]

I like the Victor Borge reference. :)