[wjdp]

I adopted it as etc or e.t.c. just seemed so clunky

[1-more]

Dots are used to denote that the previous character is an initial for a longer word. Since "et" is a whole word you only put the dot after the "c" that stands for "cetera" so "e.t.c" is kind of a hypercorrection like octopi, ignorami, or habañero.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection