abbreviations - The use of "e.g." at the end of a sentence


I was reviewing an English text as an exercise, English not being my mother tongue, and I came to this sentence:



(...) with the two other articles that conclude several things about customers e.g.. It is (...)



Note the double periods at the end of the sentence. Now I've got a gut feeling that this isn't right, but I can't find any rules about it. Is it even 'allowed' to put 'e.g.' at the end of a sentence, where something like 'etc.' would suffice?



Answer



First: No.


"E.g." is the abbreviated Latin phrase "exempli gratia," and it is used in place of "for example."


"E.g." is used to introduce a set of examples, which mean it needs to be followed by the examples. It cannot be correctly used to mean "et cetera," or "etc."


Here is a correct example using "e.g.": I like most flavors of ice cream, e.g., chocolate, vanilla, raspberry.


(Notice that "e.g." is followed by a comma.)



Regarding the comma. The comma is required. For reference, take a look at #48 common bug from the writing labs at Columbia University: http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/etc/writing-bugs.html. We also see this comma espoused by style guides, e.g., the Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) and the American Psychological Association (APA) style guides.


Regarding using "e.g." at the end of the sentence, note that I wrote that it is used to introduce examples, which means it cannot go at the end of the sentence.


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