How can PHP beginners overcome issues with email formatting, such as using periods in email addresses?

When dealing with email formatting in PHP, beginners may encounter issues with using periods in email addresses. To overcome this problem, you can use the `FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL` filter function in PHP to validate email addresses. This function will correctly handle email addresses with periods in them.

$email = "john.doe@example.com";

if (filter_var($email, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)) {
    echo "Email address is valid.";
} else {
    echo "Email address is invalid.";
}