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Template:Terminate sentence ensures a sentence ends with a specified terminator (default: a period). It avoids adding duplicate terminators and can optionally trim trailing spaces. It attempts to ignore trailing closing quotes or brackets when deciding whether a terminator is already present.

Usage

Basic:

{{Terminate sentence|This is a sentence}}
→ This is a sentence.

Named parameters:

{{Terminate sentence
 |text=He said "Hello"
 |term=.
}}
→ He said "Hello".

Custom terminator:

{{Terminate sentence|text=Warning|term=!}}
→ Warning!

Avoid duplicate terminator:

{{Terminate sentence|text=Already done.|term=.}}
→ Already done.

Trim trailing spaces:

{{Terminate sentence|text=Ends with space   |trim=yes}}
→ Ends with space.

Skip processing:

{{Terminate sentence|text=No changes here|skip=yes}}
→ No changes here

Append a note:

{{Terminate sentence|text=Complete|note=(source: 2025)}}
→ Complete. (source: 2025)

Parameters

1 / text: The input text to terminate.
term: The terminator to enforce at the end. Default is .. Common choices: !, ?.
trim: If yes/true/1, strips trailing spaces before checking.
skip: If yes/true/1, returns text unchanged (still appends note if provided).
allowdup: If yes/true/1, allows duplicate terminators (e.g., ellipses). Default disallows duplicates.
note: Optional text appended after a space, unaffected by termination logic.

Behavior details

Terminator detection attempts to ignore trailing closing quotes/brackets (", ', ”, ), ], }).
If the last visible character equals term, no extra terminator is added unless allowdup=yes.
If trim=yes, trailing spaces are removed before detection.
If note is present, it is added with a leading space after the final text.

Examples

Quotes:

{{Terminate sentence|text=He whispered "hush"|term=.}}

 → He whispered "hush".

Parentheses:

{{Terminate sentence|text=Complete (verified)|term=.}}

 → Complete (verified).

Exclamation:

{{Terminate sentence|text=Alert|term=!}}

 → Alert!

Ellipsis (allow duplicates):

{{Terminate sentence|text=Wait...|term=.|allowdup=yes}}

 → Wait....

Best practices

Prefer using term that matches the sentence intent (., !, ?).
For complex punctuation, consider the Lua-powered variant below.
Document usage in your template’s /doc page where you incorporate this helper.

Lua-powered variant (optional)

For more robust detection (including multilingual quotes and punctuation), create Module:TerminateUtil with:

-- Module:TerminateUtil
local M = {}

local closing = {
  [")"] = true, ["]"] = true, ["}"] = true,
  ['"'] = true, ["'"] = true, ["”"] = true, ["’"] = true, ["»"] = true, ["›"] = true
}

local function trimRight(s)
  return (s:gsub("%s+$",""))
end

function M.lastVisibleChar(args)
  local s = args.s or ""
  s = trimRight(s)
  local i = #s
  while i > 0 do
    local c = s:sub(i,i)
    if closing[c] then
      i = i - 1
    else
      return c
    end
  end
  return ""
end

return M

Then update the template to call:

{{#invoke:TerminateUtil|lastVisibleChar|s=text}}

This improves detection for closing quotes and brackets.

Usage

Link only:

{{format link|link}}

Link plus display:

{{format link|link|display}}

If the link or display values contain an equals sign, you will need to specify the parameter names like this:

{{format link|1=link|2=display}}

Examples

{{format link|Lion}} → [[Lion]] → Lion
{{format link|Lion#Etymology}} → [[Lion#Etymology|Lion § Etymology]] → Lion § Etymology
{{format link|Category:Lions}} → [[:Category:Lions]] → Category:Lions
{{format link|Lion#Etymology|Etymology of lion}} → [[Lion#Etymology|Etymology of lion]] → Etymology of lion
{{format link}} → Error: no link specified (help).

Template:Format link/doc

Page version status

Template documentation

Usage

Parameters

Behavior details

Examples

Best practices

Lua-powered variant (optional)

See also

Usage

Examples

See also