Random thought. . . and question. I'm going over some Sci-Fi stuff that I wrote that will go on Amazon in a few weeks as an ebook. Came across something of a noggin scratcher. Which of these is correct?
The Lt ran across the field.
or
The Lt. ran across the field.
Nothing more than a period to shorten Lieutenant, but golly >.>
Any help, much appreciated. Thank you very much for your time.
MLA's and Oxford's online style guides don't cover military ranking, and the official US military documents prefer the official internal rank abbreviations (e.g. "PFC", "SPC", "1LT", etc.) for self-referential material.
The only external style guide for writers I've found was for National Geographic...
http://stylemanual.ngs.org/home/M/military-ranks
...which indicates that the second example you gave was correct. Hope that helps!
/channelmagnuss off :p
EDIT: Best of luck on your book sales, as well! ^^