IMDb autocorrect unable to be overridden...

@Ozzy​ Thank you, I have been able to override this in other instances. (And then added a note to crazy credits to explain it.)

Hi @MovieCat,

No problem. Could you provide us with an example of where you have done this?

The formatting rule is relatively new, as such there could be some existing data that does not yet comply with the rule. If you observe any instances where the formatting would be for example: "Mr" and not "Mr." - we welcome corrections via the Contribution Form to these in accordance with the new formatting rule.

Cheers!

@Ozzy​ I'll have to dig through my amendments... they're usually obscure UK shows from the 1970s. Nothing modern.

@Ozzy Not that it's for me to question policy, but isn't it best they reflect what's on screen?

ISTR this was episodes of Play For Today.

@MovieCat​ A full stop after abbreviations that include the final letter of the full word, like Mr for Mister and Ltd for Limited, is conventional in American but not British English. See what Larry Traskwrote about this for Sussex University.

As Crown Court and Play for Today are UK productions, and especially as they’re from the 1970s, it makes sense that their credits would not have a full stop after Mr.

This is not “crazy credits”; it’s completely logical.

Full stops in abbreviations indicate where the remainder of a word is missed out, e.g., in Prof., the full stop stands in for -essor (e.g. itself is short for the Latin exemplī grātiā). But Mister has no letters after the -r, so what does the full stop in “Mr.” represent?

If either of them is, it’s the American convention that’s crazy.

Unfortunately, due to the increasing influence of US media and widespread ignorance of the purpose of punctuation in general, full stops after Mr and its like can often be seen in UK media from more recent decades, like in the logo of the original Mr. Bean from the 1990s (though, strangely enough, the 2000s animated series spells it correctly, as Mr Bean).

This is another example of IMDb requiring all languages to be “corrected” to follow the rules of American English instead of their own ones (an especially strange one considering it was started by and is still headed by someone from the UK).

I’ve already encountered how French titles with punctuation marks that have spaces on both sides in French cannot be entered correctly because IMDb auto-”corrects” them to have spaces on one side only.

@English_pedantic_grammarian​ Thank you so much for a very interesting post. I consider myself to have a decent grasp of English, and I'm old enough to have been around in those times, but I wasn't aware that this was a US thing.