Why does anyone still, as per the style guide that came my way recently, add full stops to eg & ie? To avoid ambiguity, ie, for fear of someone reading ‘eg’ as ‘egg’? Surely not. It can only be a hangover from ancient grammar primers which held, eg, e.g. to be correct, and eg incorrect. (Written, no doubt, by authors who could have told you what the e & the g stood for.)

In truth, the full stops in e.g. and i.e. are simply clutter. They serve no purpose, and should be dispensed with. In a hundred years they will be as redundant as the dash you sometime encounter in the word ‘to-day’, if you read books from a hundred years ago.

Which is heartening, and all part of a general trend in the language, away from complexity (to show how clever we are, and demarcate us clearly from the great unwashed) and toward simplicity: the notion that language is there to communicate ideas rather than to broadcast status, and that it serves that role best when redundant clutter is removed.

As with any punctuation, the acid test is simple. If in doubt, try cutting it out. Does it make any difference? Is anything lost, has clarity been sacrificed, ambiguity introduced? If the answers are no, don’t put it back. Any full stops, eg, in ie.