: What is the preferred way to type out ellipses? I have seen ellipses written out both with ("Well . . . gosh . . .") and without spaces ("Well...gosh...") between the dots. I've also looked

Vote Up Vote Down

None of these answers really helped me until I just looked it up on Wikipedia.

In the middle of a sentence, space-dot-space-dot-space-dot-space (3 dots).

Ex) Feel the breeze . . . and smell the air.

At the end of a sentence, no-space-dot-space-dot-space-dot-space-dot (4 dots).

Ex) I can't feel my legs. . . . But I can feel my arms.

This is all according to MLA. For APA and everything else, different rules apply.

(0)

Vote Up Vote Down

AP Style says to treat an ellipse as one word by using 3 periods (dots) with a space on each side.

This sentence ... with an ellipsis.

This is for journalism and based on what looks proper in that medium. Without any spaces, an ellipsis is considered "one word" by many computer systems and therefore will not be split up properly at the end of a line. The space before and after ensures that there isn't a huge word wrap if both words and the ellipsis were all treated as a single word and dropped together to the next line. No spaces in between the periods ensures that the ellipsis won't get word wrapped in the middle of the punctuation.

The Chicago Manual of style says to use three spaced periods. This is based on punctuational accuracy and would be considered the "real" way to use an ellipsis in a grammar bar fight (if there were such a thing.)

This sentence . . . with an ellipsis.

The most important thing, is that virtually everyone in publishing says do NOT use the special "ellipsis character." Microsoft Word uses it to "auto-correct" your work by default. (While we are at it, you should also not use smart quotes either.)

It's all an interesting theoretical discussion, but in the real world of fiction publishing, here is how it breaks down.

Your unsolicited manuscript can use ellipsis with or without spaces and it will not matter to the agent or publisher you send it to.
Once you are actually working with the publisher, they will give you very specific formatting guidelines for how they want your submissions to be done for everything you send to them. These guidelines will encompass much more than just how to type ellipsis, and they will be the only rules that matter when submitting to that particular publisher.

You can look up the manuscript format submission guidelines for individual publishers, but you will find that most of them don't say anything about ellipsis. That isn't an omission; they don't care.

As far as how an ellipsis comes out when printed in hard copy, that is entirely dictated by the font and typeset used by the printing company, so it doesn't help to look in published books for examples of how to type it into the computer (or on the typewriter :)

(0)

Vote Up Vote Down

Speaking as a writer, editor, and typesetter: use three dots, no spaces.

The spaces are unattractive and potentially allow the line to break mid-ellipsis. As far as the "high ASCII" character, those occasionally get chewed up in file translation (I just got a file from a client where all the smart double quotes had turned into random accented characters). Three periods together (or four, at the end of a sentence) will never be broken or changed into anything else.

(0)

Vote Up Vote Down

There is a "consensus", but you shouldn't care about that. HedgeMage is right, care about content, you can replace the ellipses afterwards, if you need.

The difference is, that you normally write ellipses with three dots (...). But there is a special character for ellipses (…). So for every font there is this character, which makes the text easier/more pleasantly to read. But typesetting is not your job. It's much easier to use the three dots while writing instead of searching the special character.

(0)

Vote Up Vote Down

There's no generally accepted ruling on this that I know of, and it's the sort of thing easily handled with a search-and-replace during typesetting should your publisher care.

Worry about content, not typesetting.

(0)