This article is about the afterthought. For the page description language, see PostScript. For other uses, see Postscript (disambiguation). For the video game Post Scriptum, see Squad 44.
A postscript (P.S., PS, PS.) may be a sentence, a paragraph, or occasionally many paragraphs added, often hastily and incidentally, after the signature of a letter[1] or (sometimes) the main body of an essay or book. The term comes from the Latinpost scriptum, an expression meaning "written after"[2][3] (which may be interpreted in the sense of "that which comes after the writing").[4]
In a book or essay, a more carefully composed addition (e.g., for a second edition) is called an afterword. The word "postscript" has poetically been used to refer to any sort of addendum to some main work even if it is not attached to a main work, for example Søren Kierkegaard's book titled Concluding Unscientific Postscript.
Sometimes when additional points are made after the first postscript, abbreviations such as P.P.S. (post-post-scriptum) and P.P.P.S. (post-post-post-scriptum) and so on are added, ad infinitum.