I’ve seen .: used two times now, and I really wonder what is? The first time I saw it was in an extract from the Swedish dictionary SAOL in NE. They used it something like this so:
History.: since year x
More lately I saw it used in this comment by @[email protected] like so:
What make bikes so expensive?
R.: The willing of people to buy them.
What is this? Were does it come from? Should I use it?
Edit: thanks for all the answers :). It turns out it was actually used for abbreviation in the dictionary, they wrote “hist.” instead of “historia”.
“R.:” looks like an abbreviated form of “Reply:”/“Response:” but since “History” isn’t abbreviated it just looks like a typo to me.