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by 1-more 1164 days ago
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 habaƱero.

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