Hey, everyone—welcome to another English grammar lesson. Today we’re going to be covering the
abbreviation “etc.,” or “et cetera.”
So, again, “etc.,” or “et cetera,” is a Latin expression, meaning “and other things”
or “and so forth”—basically that the list goes on.
“Et cetera” is used to show that a list continues, that there’s more to it than the stuff you’ve
written into the sentence. So, let’s take a look: “I play many sports: basketball, baseball,
football, et cetera.” Okay, so, again, “et cetera” means that the list goes on, that it continues,
that there is more to it that we’re leaving out. So, yes, I play basketball; yes, I play baseball;
and yes, I play football. But I also play other sports—more than just the ones that are
listed. And this is how we use “et cetera.” Pretty simple, right? Or how about this: “This semester,
we’ll be studying commas, semicolons, colons, et cetera.” So, once again, we have a list,
and the use of “et cetera” shows that the list goes on. Yes, we’re going to be studying commas
and semicolons and colons, but there are more—more topics, more concepts, that we’re going to be
covering this semester. So, again, this is how we use “et cetera”: to show that a list goes on.
Okay, so now that we have a pretty basic understanding, let’s talk about some things
that we don’t want to do with “et cetera.” And the first of those things is that we don’t want to use
the word “and” with “et cetera.” Like this… “I like apples, oranges, bananas, and etc.”
So, this would be wrong because “et cetera” already has the word “and” built into its
definition. “Et cetera” means “and so on,” “and so forth.” So, by actually writing the word
“and” into our sentence, we’d technically be saying “and and so on,” “and and so forth,” which,
as you can see, would be wrong. Okay? So just make sure you’re not saying “and etc.” because
the definition of “et cetera” already includes the word “and.” The second “no-no,” so to speak,
is that we don’t want to use “et cetera” when we already have a similar expression in the sentence,
like “such as” or “for example.” Like this… “I enjoy many flavors of ice cream, such as vanilla,
chocolate, cookie dough, et cetera.” So, the reason you wouldn’t want to use “et cetera” here
is because the phrase “such as” already shows that we’re not including everything; it already shows
that we’ll be shortening our list and leaving some things out. So to say “et cetera” after
we’ve already said “such as” would be a bit redundant, a bit repetitive; we would just say, “I
enjoy many flavors of ice cream, such as vanilla, chocolate, and cookie dough” and leave it at that.
The same thing is true here: “John plays many instruments. For example, he plays piano, guitar,
drums, et cetera.” So, again, same problem. When we say “For example,” we’re already showing that
we’re not going to be listing everything—right? We’re just going to be giving a few examples;
we’re not going to be naming every single instrument. So, since we have “for example” in
the sentence already, we don’t need to be saying “et cetera.” We would just say, “John plays many
instruments. For example, he plays piano, guitar, and drums.” No “et cetera” needed. Okay, and the
final tip with “et cetera” is that we don’t want to use it with a list that isn’t actually
logical. So what does that mean, exactly: a list that isn’t “logical”? Well, when you’re listing
a bunch of sports you play, or a bunch of fruit you like, or your favorite colors or something,
most of the time—with lists like that—it’s going to be pretty easy to assume what’s coming next,
to assume what’s being left out of the list. And that’s when we can use “et cetera,” because we can
assume or infer what’s coming next. But that’s not always the case. Not every list we have is
going to be so focused or linear or logical. And when we have that problem, when the list
isn’t quite as predictable, when it might actually be kind of tough to guess what’s coming next,
we don’t want to use “et cetera.” Like this… “Sarah likes peanut butter, knitting, math class,
et cetera.” So, like, this is not the best use of “et cetera,” right?—because the list is far
too broad. We’re not talking about something super specific, like sports or instruments or colors or
food. Yes, we’re talking about Sarah’s particular interests here, but they’re so wide-ranging that
it’s going to be pretty tough to actually guess what’s coming next. So, because of that, using
“et cetera” doesn’t really work here. Again, when we use “et cetera,” we use it because it’s fairly
obvious what’s coming next in our list. And here, it’s not that obvious, so we wouldn’t
use “et cetera.” Okay, so I know I said that was the last one, but there’s actually one more thing,
and that is “How do we use punctuation with ‘et cetera,’ seeing as how the abbreviation ends
with a period?” Well, it’s pretty simple. Put a period on “et cetera” all the time,
and just make sure that you never have two periods in a row. So if “et cetera” ends your sentence,
the period on “et cetera” can also be the period of that sentence. Otherwise, you just follow
normal punctuation rules. If you need a comma after the period in “et cetera,” or you need
some quotation marks around it, go right ahead. There’s nothing special about it, otherwise. Just
make sure you don’t have a double period situation at the end of your sentence, and you’re all good.
Cool! Well, whether you came here for a refresher or are just now learning this stuff for the first
time, I hope this video helped. Be sure to check out the free practice down in the description,
and—uh—we’ll see you next time. Thanks.