An ellipsis (plural ellipses) is the sequence of three dots used to indicate an omission in quoted text. Every typeface has an ellipsis character.
Mac OS ellipsis: OPTION + semicolon
Windows ellipsis: ALT + 0133
HTML ellipsis: …
The ellipsis is frequently approximated by typing three periods in a row, or three periods with spaces in between. Three periods in a row are too close together to make a credible quasi-ellipsis. Periods separated by spaces leave too much space and also create the risk of a line break in the middle.
Use the ellipsis character, not the approximations. Word and WP can be configured to automatically substitute an ellipsis character when you type three periods. This suffices in most circumstances.
Great. I just learned something. I will put that in my autocorrect right away.
My understanding on the use of ellipses is that four periods are used where the text elided by the ellipsis spans a period or other sentence break. Do most (competent) fonts have a four-ellispsis character?
No, Justin, and I don’t think it really IS a four-period ellipsis; it’s simply an ellipsis followed by a real live period.
I think Lanny is right grammatically, but Justin’s typographical question remains. If I use Word’s ellipsis character and then a period to end the sentence, the space between the last two periods is much larger than the space between adjacent periods in the ellipsis. It looks pretty bad to me. Matthew, what do you think about the aesthetics, and if the spacing should be equal, is there any easy way to do that?
The Bluebook specifies three kinds of ellipsis that have four dots:
1) A deletion right before a sentence-ending period.
2) A sentence-ending period right before a deletion.
3) A deletion of one or more paragraphs.
But the Bluebook would have you type all three the same way—as four periods with three spaces in between. The problem, obviously, is that makes them visually identical, and easy to confuse at a quick glance (especially 1 and 2).
If I were king of Bluebook typography, I would say that all deletions needing an ellipsis should be handled by the three-dot ellipsis character.
For cases (1) and (2), the ellipsis dots would be closer together than the Bluebook currently specifies, and thus there would be a visual distinction between the ellipsis and the punctuation.
For case (3), I have no idea why a deleted paragraph should get a special ellipsis that’s 33% bigger.
To create a four-dot ellipsis in WP:
1. Type a period followed by a three-dot ellipsis.
2. Highlight both the period and the ellipsis.
3. Select Format > Typesetting > Word/Letter Spacing…
4. Set Letterspacing to 115% of optimal.
It’s a kludge, but it looks right.
An appendix with all the keyboard shortcuts to getting special characters (eg. “Windows ellipsis: ALT + 0133″) would fit very nicely within this website!
I think there’s a confusion in the first line. An ellipsis is a marker* used to indicate an omission in text. The most common form of ellipsis is the ‘…’ , but an em dash may also be used in some circumstances.
As an analogy, all elephants are pachyderms, but not all pachyderms are elephants. A ‘…’ is an ellipsis, but not all ellipses are ‘…’. (there’s a scary bit of punctuation!)
*Technically I believe an ellipsis is also the act of omission, so if I say out loud “Would you mind …?” the ‘…’ is an ellipsis, but so is my omission of the words “getting out of the way” in the real world. For the purposes of this document that’s not really relevant though.