In these cases, the speaker is generally thinking of a time period meaning up to the present.

这种情况下，说话者通常想的是到现在为止的一段时间。

For shopalcoholics, the post-Christmas period means only one thing: sales.

对于购物狂来说，圣诞节后只有一件事：销售。

Jenkins added that the long U.S. copyright period meant many works that would now become available have long since been lost.

詹金斯补充说，美国的版权保护期很长，这意味着许多现在可以使用的作品早已丢失。

The thing to remember about these: they work just like the period, meaning that they end the sentence, they end the idea.

关于这些要记住的事情：它们就像句号一样起作用，这意味着它们结束了句子， 结束了想法。