. | 。

The full stop or period (.) is a punctuation mark typically found at the end of a sentence, unless it is a question or exclamation.

In the 3^rd century BC, the Greeks developed a punctuation system where ὑποστιγμή (the low dot .) functioned as the modern comma, while στιγμὴ μέση (the interpunct or the middle dot ·) played the role similar to that of the modern semicolon; στιγμὴ τελεία (the high dot ˙) marked the end of a completed thought, like the modern full stop.

Classical Latin had no lower-case letters, interword spacing or punctuation; hovvever·the·interpvnct·vvas·sometimes·vsed·to·separate·vvords

Apart from the ends of sentences, full stops are found after initials, some abbreviations and acronyms. In English-speaking countries, they indicate a decimal point, although in Britain until 1970s they used the interpunct for this purpose.

In Chinese and Japanese, a small circle 。 is used to indicate the end of sentence instead of a solid dot .

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i | і

Apart from being a letter of Latin alphabet, i can constitute a whole word.

In Catalan, Ladino, Latgalian and a number of Slavic languages, i (or і; Ukrainian and Belarusian letter і looks exactly like Latin i) is a conjunction meaning “and”. In Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Scots, Irish, Hawaiian, Rapa Nui, Tahitian and Tongan it’s a preposition “in”. In Foi language of Papua New Guinea, it may mean “eye”, “seventeen”, or “twenty-one”.

In chemistry, i stands for the Van ’t Hoff factor. In mathematics, i is used to denote

1. imaginary unit, i.e. a square root of −1;
2. index of summation, used to calculate a sum ∑; or
3. index variable in a matrix.

ⓘ (or ℹ) is a symbol of an information source, such as tourist information centre.

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e

The Latin E is one of several letters derived from the Greek ε. Apart from being the most frequent letter in, for example, English, French, Spanish, Italian, German and (especially) Dutch, in some languages e can constitute a whole word.

In Italian, Portuguese, Spanish e a number of other Romance languages, e is a common conjunction meaning “and”. In Welsh and Scottish Gaelic, e is a pronoun for “he” or “him”. In Hungarian, this word means “this”.

The transcendental number e (2.71828...) is a mathematical constant, the base of the natural logarithm. In physics, e is a fundamental constant known as the elementary charge. Also, e is a symbol for the electron, sometimes written as e⁻ to avoid confusion with the positron, e⁺. In astronomy, e denotes orbital eccentricity, a parameter that determines the amount by which an object’s orbit deviates from a perfect circle. Finally, ℮ or the estimated sign is a mark that you can see on many pre-packed goods (such as chocolate bars and bottles of drink) sold in the EU.

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