Postscript

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For the page description language, see PostScript.

A postscript (from post scriptum, a Latin expression meaning "after writing" and abbreviated P.S.) [1][2] is a sentence, paragraph, or occasionally many paragraphs added, often hastily and incidentally, after the signature of a letter or (sometimes) the main body of an essay or book. In a book or essay, a more carefully-composed addition (e.g., for a second edition) is called an afterword. An afterword, not usually called a postscript, is written in response to critical remarks on the first edition. The word has, poetically, been used to refer to any sort of addendum to some main work, even if not attached to a main work, as in Søren Kierkegaard's book titled Concluding Unscientific Postscript.

Contents

[edit] Usage

The Oxford English Dictionary lists PS both with and without full stops (PS/P.S.). A "P.S.S.", meaning a "Post-subscript", or "P.P.S.", meaning "Post-postscript" is sometimes used to allow the letter writer to add even more thoughts after the first postscript. To continue, a third postscript would be a P.P.P.S. and so on, although these additions are rarely used in practice and would probably be deemed as poor style.[citation needed]

[edit] In popular culture

[edit] See also

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[edit] References

  1. ^ Sullivan, Robert Joseph (1877). A dictionary of the English language, Pages 509 and 317. 
  2. ^ Tanner, William Maddux (1922). Composition and Rhetoric. Original from the University of California: Ginn & Co, Page xxvii.