A few pointers on the ellipsis …

They say content is king, so it’s worth taking a look at punctuation now and then.


##The ellipsis

It’s a form of punctuation that you probably use (heck, even fluff posters love it [thanks dear…]), but which you might not understand too well. Indeed, it’s a much abused punctuation mark.

Important things to know about the ellipsis

The ellipsis is a series of three dots. Yes, three … not any number you like [looking at you, fluffers dear…].

The ellipsis is not a bunch of individual periods / full stops strung together. It’s a singular entity in its own right. So please don’t type it as periods.

How to type an ellipsis

You can type an ellipsis character on your keyboard. On a PC, you can press the alt + 0 1 3 3 keys. On a Mac, it’s option + ;.

On the web, you can just type the character into your HTML as described above. But if you are worried about character encoding, you can use the … entity reference (or if that’s not geeky enough for you, try the hexadecimal reference … instead).

Use cases for the ellipsis

There are all sorts of uses for the ellipsis, including—

  • where words are left out of a quotation (“Four score and seven years ago …”)
  • to indicate an interruption, hesitation or pause in dialogue or thought (I just wanted to add … no, never mind)
  • to indicate a trailing off or something left for the imagination (and, as for what I’d like to do to fluff posters if I could get my hands on them, well …)

Presenting the ellipsis

This is where things get a little more opinionated, as there are various preferred practices. I’ll just give you my recommendations for using the ellipsis, because everyone else is wrong anyway. :stuck_out_tongue:

In most cases, there should be a space before and after an ellipsis: He was my friend … or so I believed.

An ellipsis at the end of a sentence performs the same function as a period/full stop, so you don’t need anything extra: This will do the trick … Nothing else is needed between sentences.

However, where appropriate, other punctuation marks can be used together with an ellipsis: What else could we do …? There was no other option …! (Notice that there’s no gap between the ellispsis and the following punctuation mark.)

Some further examples:

  • We stood before the memorial, saying as one, “Lest we forget …”.
  • “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. … I come to bury Caesar, not to priase him.”
  • But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? … It is Juliet, lighting a cigarette …

There are many more things that could be said about the use of this punctuation mark, but it’s worth making sure the above basics are in place before going further.

So, what do you think? Do you use the ellipse much, and has this changed the way you think about it at all?

1 Like

For anyone trying to do this on Linux (as I did after reading this post), it turns out that you have to type ctrl + shift + u which inserts an underlined u on the screen, after which you type the unicode hex value (2026) and hit space.

2 Likes

Thanks fretburner. Jeesh, they don’t make it easy!

I’m guilty of both “three periods” and “several periods” to represent “vertical ellipsis” i.e.

TBH do you think most see a negligible difference between


and

I know I do, and I know it’s wrong, just saying.

EDIT
I just learned something new
It’s alt 0 1 3 3 on the numberpad, it doesn’t work from the upper row

All the books I have seen covering punctuation state that the ellipsis must be followed by a full stop at the end of a sentence because an ellipsis is not a full stop. You also imply this when you discuss the other punctuation that can be used to end a sentence such as ? and ! but contradict yourself when you try to claim that an ellipsis at the end of a sentence performs the same function as a period/full stop which of course it does not.

So something like this is wrong?

same with

?

Off-Topic
Why do I feel like my long since deparrted 7th grade English teacher is looking over my shoulder :ghost:

Some reputable books still advise using dots, but I’m going with Oxford on this one—that there’s a character for it, so use it. (It prevents the ellipsis being broken up over lines, which is one advantage.)

None of the books I’ve read say that. Of course, it comes down to preferred tradition etc. An ellipsis can end a sentence just like a question mark or exclamation mark can. The only reason to use both (say …! or …?) is to indicate that there’s both a trailing off and and question or exclamation.

I love proper ellipses :smile:

… vs … the ultimate battle.

I would think that with the way an ellipsis is normally used those situations where it actually ends a sentence rather than trailing off as an incomplete sentence would be rare so the situations where you would even need to consider whether to include the full stop after it would also be rare. If it is being used to indicate that the sentence is incomplete then there is no end of the sentence so no full stop would be required.

I can remember reading books that stated that the only time a ‘fourth dot’ should be used is where the ellipsis is at the end of the sentence but I can’t remember them giving an example of where it actually ends the sentence rather than indicating that the end of the sentence is missing.

It’s mainly an issue in longer, block quotations, where various bits of text are left out. But it’s also is fairly common in literature when representing pauses in speech.

The Aussie (oi oi oi) guide to literary style states—

With the exception of quotation marks, question marks and exclamation marks, no punctuation mark precedes the first point of ellipsis or follows the last.

The Chicago manual concurs, although it also speaks of the 4-point ellipsis too. In practice, this mainly seems to involve four dots when one sentence ends with a period, and the next starts with an ellipsis (to indicate an omission), although it does note some traditions of having a fourth dot at the end of an omission—which effectively means a period after an ellipsis. Still, I don’t see the point of complicating things to that degree, personally.

This topic was automatically closed 91 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.