16

When I said

"in my field, people earn triple in the US. for the same work in China."

a native speaker told me I should have got rid of that ".", is it a more modern style to refer to America?

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  • 15
    If you used the full stop (period) because it's an abbreviation, you should have put one after both letters (U.S.) However, it's not necessary to use them at all; see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_stop#After_initials (scroll down to Acronyms and initialisms).
    – Kate Bunting
    May 21 '20 at 10:02
  • Nitpick: Referring to the US as America is like referring to China as "Asia" ;)
    – ljrk
    May 23 '20 at 10:45
38

"US." is wrong.

Initialisms are either written with full-stops (periods) between every letter or not at all:

  • The U.S.A.
  • The USA

Shortenings are are abbreviations in which the end of the word has been dropped. These are written with one full stop at the end:

  • Approx. (approximately)
  • Esp. (especially)

I can see why you would think "the US" is an abbreviation (of "USA"), but really it is an initialism in its own right. As such, it should either have a full-stop after every letter, or none:

The US
or
The U.S.

Note this article about the US Military which uses both options for an initialism. The headline has NO marks ("The US Military") but the body of the article does use marks ("the U.S. Military").

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  • 8
    Nitpick: USA is an initialism, not an acronym.
    – John Montgomery
    May 21 '20 at 21:39
  • 2
    Also, U.S. is American English and US is British English. Same for U.K. and UK.
    – Gus
    May 22 '20 at 17:02

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