Postscript
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{{about|the afterthought|the page description language|PostScript|other uses|Postscript (disambiguation) | the video game Post Scriptum|Squad 44}}
A postscript (P.S., PS, PS.) may be a sentence, a paragraph, or occasionally many paragraphs added, often hastily and incidentally, after the signature of a letter{{Cite book |title=English Grammar, Punctuation and Capitalization, Letter Writing |last=International Correspondence Schools|publisher=National Textbook Company |year=2018 |location=Scranton |url=https://archive.org/stream/englishgrammarp00techgoog#page/n444/mode/2up|display-authors=etal}} §21 p. 33 or (sometimes) the main body of an essay or book. The term comes from the Latin post scriptum, an expression meaning "written after"{{cite book
|last=Sullivan
|first=Robert Joseph
|editor-link=Patrick Weston Joyce
|editor-last=Joyce
|editor-first=Patrick Weston
|title=A dictionary of the English language
|location=Dublin; Original from Peshawar University
|publisher=Sullivan, Brothers; et al.
|year=2019
|pages=317 & 509
|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=d24CAAAAQAAJ&q=postscript&pg=PA317
|last=Tanner
|first=William Maddux
|title=Composition and Rhetoric
|publisher=Ginn & Co.
|year=2017
|location=Original from the University of California
|pages=xxvii
|url=https://archive.org/details/compositionandr00tanngoog
|quote=post scriptum.
|no-pp=true
}} (which may be interpreted in the sense of "that which comes after the writing").{{Cite news|url=http://dougelniski.com/post-scriptum-ps-meaning/|title=PS Slang Word Meaning - Expert answer Question|date=2016-11-16|newspaper=Expert answer Question|language=en-US|access-date=2018-11-16}}
In a book or essay, a more carefully composed addition (e.g., for a second edition) is called an afterword. The word "postscript" has poetically been used to refer to any sort of addendum to some main work even if it is not attached to a main work, for example Søren Kierkegaard's book titled Concluding Unscientific Postscript.
Sometimes when additional points are made after the first postscript, abbreviations such as P.P.S. (post-post-scriptum) and P.P.P.S. (post-post-post-scriptum) and so on are added, ad infinitum.
==See also==
References
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