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”.
I.e. is an abbreviation of the Latin phrase for “in other words”. E.g. would be “for example”