Whether or not it is advisable or acceptable to use abbreviations in a text for normal words and expressions of the language (in contrast to names of institutions etc.) depends to a considerable extent on the type of text. In formal text it is advisable to restrict abbreviations to an absolute minimum. There are a small number of abbreviations which are known as such rather than by the full version, the most common one being without doubt i.e., which stands for id est, the Latin for that is. Also very frequent is e.g., which stands for exempli gratia, the Latin for for example. I.e. can be used anywhere in a text, but we advise you to reserve e.g. for use in note-like sections, such as lists or information in running text given between brackets. Otherwise we recommend that you use for example or for instance.
     In British English there is quite a strong convention that if the last letter of the abbreviation of a single word is the last letter of the word, then there is no full stop at the end of the abbreviation. Thus you write:

A notable exception is no., the abbreviation for number (from the French numéro). This is more often than not written with a full stop to distinguish it from the word no, and thus to ease comprehension.
     Another problem related to punctuation concerns abbreviations of multi-word expressions. Is it AD or A.D. for Anno Domini; is it MA or M.A. for Master of Arts?; is it eg or e.g. for for example? The answer is that you will see both, but that there is a very strong tendency nowadays to refrain from punctuation in all these cases. If the abbreviations are just as well known as the expressions they stand for, or perhaps more so, then this tendency is particularly strong, as in KLM and BBC. Possible exceptions would again be motivated by the desire for disambiguation and hence ease of comprehension. Thus one might still find U.S.for United States, rather than US.
     A third and final point concerns a particular problem that Dutch writers have: the use of English abbreviations which unfortunately just do not exist in English. Here are the four big offenders:

Note also that none of these four expressions has any standard abbreviated form.