From a previous discussion:


Subject: RE: BS: a new punctuation mark
From: Stilly River Sage - PM
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 02:14 PM

McGrath described exactly the most common instance of how I use the ellipsis here, to indicate I could say more, but am pausing at this point since the meaning has been made.

According to the Modern Language Association (MLA), an ellipsis should technically include spaces between the periods, thus: . . . to be clearly seen. If you use an ellipsis in a quote, it means you're dropping part of the phrase (for space and clear meaning). If you use . . . . (four dots) then the first one is the end of the previous sentence and the next three indicate that more than a few words, perhaps as much as a few sentences or paragraphs, have been dropped. They're trickier to use correctly. At some point you have to decide to simply use two quotes, rather than running two distant bits together as one.

I use the ~ to mean "about" or "approximately." I don't know where I picked it up, but it's pretty commonplace here in the U.S.

SRS





Post - Top - Forum Home - Printer Friendly - Translate
Subject: RE: BS: a new punctuation mark
From: Don Firth - PM
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 04:31 PM

Actually, there are two forms of the elipsis: three dots ( . . . ), indicating that something has been omitted within a sentence, or sometimes tying two sentences together; and four dots, indicating that the omission comes at the end of a sentence or paragraph, thus. . . .   The latter case is often used informally as a means if indicating an incomplete thought, presuming that the reader can fill in the rest.

Spacing is also regarded as important when typing a manuscript. In the three-dot ellipsis, there should be a space following the last letter of the preceding word, a space between each dot, and a space preceding the first letter of the following word. In the four-dot ellipsis, there should be no space between the last letter of the preceding word and the first dot, but a space between each dot. There should be two spaces following the fourth dot.

Or so says my style manual, which has a good section on preparing manuscripts for publication.

Don Firth