Everything about Ellipsis totally explained
Ellipsis (plural
ellipses; from
Greek ἔλλειψις 'omission') in
printing and
writing refers to a mark or series of marks that usually indicate an intentional omission of a word or a phrase from the original text. An ellipsis can also be used to indicate a pause in speech, an unfinished thought or, at the end of a sentence, a trailing off into silence (
aposiopesis).
The most common form for an ellipsis consists of a row of three full stops (..., . . . or [...]). Forms encountered less often are three asterisks (***), or one (—) or more (––) dashes.
The triple-dot punctuation mark is also called a
suspension point,
points of ellipsis,
periods of ellipsis, or colloquially,
dot-dot-dot.
In writing
The use of ellipses can either mislead or clarify, and the reader must rely on the good intentions of the writer who uses it. An example of this ambiguity is ‘She went to… school.’ In this sentence, ‘…’ might represent the word ‘elementary’, or the word ‘no’. Omission of part of a quoted sentence without indication by an ellipsis (or bracketed text) (for example ‘She went to school.’ as opposed to ‘She went to Broadmoor Elementary school.’) is considered misleading. An ellipsis at the end of the sentence which ends with a period (or such a period followed by an ellipsis), appears, therefore, as four dots.
An ellipsis may also imply an unstated alternative indicated by context. For example, when Count Dracula says "I don't drink … wine", the implication is that he does drink something else, which in the context would be blood. In such usage the ellipsis is stronger than a mere dash, where for example "I don't drink — wine" might only indicate that the Count, not a native English speaker, was pausing to get the correct word without other implication.
Typographical rules
There are differences in typographical rules and conventions of using ellipses between languages.
In English
The style and use varies in the English language.
The Chicago Manual of Style suggests the use of an ellipsis for any omitted word, phrase, line, or paragraph from within a quoted passage. There are two commonly used methods of using ellipses: one uses three dots for any omission, while the second makes a distinction between omissions within a sentence (using three dots: ...) and omissions between sentences (using a period and a space followed by three dots: . . . ). An ellipsis at the end of a sentence with no sentence following should be followed by a period (for a total of four dots). The
Modern Language Association (MLA) however, used to indicate that an ellipsis must include spaces before and after each dot in all uses. If an ellipsis is meant to represent an omission,
square brackets must surround the ellipsis to make it clear that there was no pause in the original quote: [ . . . ]. Currently, the MLA has removed the requirement of brackets in their style handbooks. However, the use of brackets is still correct as it clears confusion.
According to Robert Bringhurst's
Elements of Typographic Style, the details of typesetting ellipses depend on the character and size of the font being set and the typographer's preference. Bringhurst writes that a full space between each dot is "another Victorian eccentricity. In most contexts, the Chicago ellipsis is much too wide" — he recommends using flush dots, or
thin-spaced dots (up to one-fifth of an
em), or the prefabricated ellipsis character (
Unicode U+2026,
Latin entity …). Bringhurst suggests that normally an ellipsis should be spaced fore-and-aft to separate it from the text, but when it combines with other punctuation, the leading space disappears and the other punctuation follows. He provides the following examples:
| i ... j |
k.... |
l..., l |
l, ... l |
m...? |
n...! |
In legal writing in the United States, Rule 5.3 in the
Bluebook citation guide governs the use of ellipses and requires a space before the first dot and between the two subsequent dots. If an ellipsis ends the sentence, then there are three dots, each separated by a space, followed by the final punctuation.
In Polish
In
Polish, an ellipsis (called, which means
multidot) is always composed of three dots without any spaces between. There is no space between the ellipsis and the preceding word, but there's always a space after the ellipsis, unless the following character is a closing bracket or quote mark, in which case the space is inserted after that character instead.
When the ellipsis is used for omitting a fragment of quotation, it's always surrounded with either square brackets or, more commonly, parentheses, with no space inside. An ellipsis without parentheses usually means a pause in speech. It can also mean a word said partially and interrupted and in that case can be directly followed by another punctuation mark without space: Ellipsis can be used at the end of a sentence, but it's always composed of three dots, never four, and the only difference is the capitalisation of the next word:
In Japanese
In writing, the ellipsis consists usually of three dots (one ellipsis character) or six dots (two ellipsis characters), or ; however, variations in the number of dots exist. In horizontally written text the dots are commonly vertically centred within the text height (between the
baseline and the ascent line), as in the standard Japanese
Windows fonts; in vertically written text the dots are always centred horizontally. As the Japanese word for dot is pronounced '', the dots are colloquially referred to by the moniker '' (akin to the English 'dot dot dot'). More officially, they're called
n-dot leaders (
n-ten rīda,
n-ten rīdā), where
n corresponds to the number of dots.
In
Japanese manga, the ellipsis by itself represents speechlessness, or a "
pregnant pause." Given the context, this could be anything from an admission of guilt or an expression of being dumbfounded as a result of something that another person has just said or done. As a device, the
ten-ten-ten is intended to focus the reader on a character while allowing the character to not speak any dialogue. This conveys to the reader a focus of the narrative "camera" on the silent subject, implying an expectation of some motion or action. It isn't unheard of to see inanimate objects "speaking" the ellipsis.
In Chinese
In
Chinese, the ellipsis is six dots (in two groups of three dots, occupying the same horizontal space as two characters). The dots are always centred within the baseline and the ascender when horizontal, but on the baseline are also accepted today; and centred horizontally when vertical.
In mathematical notation
An ellipsis is also often used in
mathematics to mean “and so forth”. In a list, between commas, or following a comma, a normal ellipsis is used, as in:
»
To indicate the omission of values in a repeated operation, an ellipsis raised to the center of the line is used between two operation symbols or following the last operation symbol, as in:
»
The latter formula means the sum of all
natural numbers from 1 to 100. However, it isn't a formally defined
mathematical symbol. These dots should never be used unless the pattern to be followed is clear.
Sometimes, it's appropriate to display the formula being used. The preceding example would become:
»
Another example is the set of
zeros of the
cosine function.
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