One of our goals with Seeing Indigo is to create a forum for editorial questions. Please feel free to e-mail us questions and post comments to build this dialogue.
Erin asked: What is the propper use for an ellipsis?
Friday, August 04, 2006
Forum for Editorial Questions
One of our goals with Seeing Indigo is to create a forum for editorial questions. Please feel free to e-mail us questions and post comments to build this dialogue.
Erin asked: What is the propper use for an ellipsis?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Good question! Lately, a common use for the ellipsis is to end a sentence in an e-mail. Like many e-mail grammar trends, this is not correct.
ReplyDeleteThe proper use for an ellipsis is to show a lapse of time or content. It is most often used in quoting a research source in formal essays when the author wants to skip some information in the middle of the quote.
You'll see ellipses in newspaper articles too when the reporter is quoting information from an interview but needs to cut a word or phrase to make the quote fit with the surrounding content in the article.
Another common place to find ellipses is in dialogue, when a character trails off or pauses in speech.
Typically, an ellipsis consists of three periods in a row. Do not put spaces between them or you could have the problem of the ellipsis breaking at the end of a line, with two periods on one line and one on the other. In Microsoft Word, if you type three periods in a row, the program will automatically replace it with an ellipsis character that will not break. A four-period ellipsis is also correct if the ellipsis is meant to show content removed at the end of a sentence. The fourth period is not required, however.