Tempo dot

[OCTO]

I am very curious about the following opinion/rule.
The most of the classical printed music has the tempo indication that concludes with a dot [.].
But many engravers completely ignore that today.
Is it the old practice or neglecting of the rule?

Examples:
Allegro.
Molto adagio. (Alla breve.)

French scores have missing it, but usually the German scores have it.
Any idea?

[Knut]

German scores seem to use a lot of periods overall. Often, there are dots following titles, subtitles, composer, etc., as well as tempo indications. I suppose language specific typographical convention might dictate whether or not they're appropriate, but other than that, they seems to be purely stylistic. I personally don't like this practice, as a tempo indication is not a sentence, and the score looks cleaner without periods everywhere.

[MJCube]

I quite agree with Knut. Another special use of periods in German is for ordinal numbers: 1 = one; 1. = First.

[Knut]

Another special use of periods in German is for ordinal numbers: 1 = one; 1. = First.

I think this is common within the germanic languages. It's certainly the same in Norwegian.

[OCTO]

Thanks Knut, very clear reasoning. I was forcing my students to write "Largo."
And yes, I was schooled in german theory tradition...

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[John Ruggero]

And it appears to be an older German tradition. Henle and Wiener Urtext do not use it.

[basso.continuo]

Yes, it is a historical German tradition. Not only for music but for everything: books, newspapers, signatures etc. A dot used to be behind everything.