: Re: Spaces in the ellipsis in novels I am having a hard time with the ellipsis. When I enter dot dot dot in Microsoft Word, it automatically makes the spaces between each dot a little longer

@Gail2416123

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Separate presentation from content, or in other words, aesthetics from semantics.

As a writer, your job is to produce the content — the actual text and any special characters/markers conveying additional semantics (e.g. an ellipsis character).
It's the typesetter's / e-book formatter's job to form the presentation of that content. Of course, you might participate in presentational decisions as well at that point.

The spacing between the dots in an ellipsis character is purely a presentational concern. As such, it's completely irrevelant when writing the actual content.

When you want an ellipsis, write an ellipsis character. No, don't write three full stops. Three full stops don't have the same semantic meaning as an ellipsis character. How is an e-book reader supposed to know how it should pronounce three consequent full stops, "dot dot dot" or leave a small break before continuing? When you write an ellipsis character, the e-book reader will unambiguously know what you meant.

Another example: What if the formatter of your content decides to leave some space between the dots of all ellipses in your book? They will definitely not want to go through each occurrence of three consequent dots, and replace them with the same thing with spaces in between. That'd be cumbersome, and against the basic principle that presentational changes should not require any changes in the content. Optimally, they would simply change the way the ellipsis character is rendered, and all ellipses in your text would automatically be rendered according to that change — no going through the text needed.

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