Ellipsis

An ellipsis (plural ellipses), also called a "period pause," is a typographical mark made up of three or four dots, usually used to indicate that something is missing from a text.

This Wiki page assumes you are proofing or post-processing an English project. The rules for ellipses are different for languages other than English.

Proofing

Ellipses are one of the few instances where volunteers may be asked to enter something in the proofing rounds different than what is on the printed page. Proofers should carefully review the Period Pause section of the Proofreading Guidelines and the examples given there.

However, there are some situations not covered by the Guidelines. See this discussion thread for many examples. Below are some examples of how people have solved these complex ellipsis issues, but remember: most of these situations are unusual enough that you should ask in the project discussion thread and leave a **note for the postprocessor.

Line and page breaks

Because an ordinary mid-sentence ellipsis acts as a word, with a space before and after, no special treatment is needed for a three-dot ellipsis that occurs at the beginning or end of a line or page. Treat it as you would any other word.

I turned around ...
and there she was!

is fine, and so is:

I turned around
... and there she was

However, if a line ends with closing punctuation and the next line of the same paragraph starts with an ellipsis, you need to bring the ellipsis up to the previous line to join it into a four-dot ellipsis:

I turned around.
... That's when I saw her.

should be proofed as:

I turned around....
That's when I saw her.

In some older texts, the three dots of the ellipsis itself may be split across lines:

You trowed I was some copper coin . .
. I am a knight of Spain!

In this rare case, the ellipsis needs to be joined together on the first line.

Page breaks

When an ellipsis comes at the beginning or end of the page, the rules are the same, but what proofreaders need to do may be different.

Because we don't move text or punctuation from page to page, if an ellipsis needs to be moved up from the first line of a page to the last line of the previous page, do not move it yourself; leave a [**note], on both pages if possible, and the postprocessor will rejoin them. Leave a full [**note]; do not simply use an * as you would for a dash that needs joining.

Ambiguous sentence endings

The Guidelines say to add a fourth dot when an ellipsis comes at the end of a sentence. But it's not always clear whether that's the case, for example, when the word following the ellipsis is "I" or a proper noun, or the start of a new line in poetry, where it would would be capitalized either way:

The only solution is to try to figure out the intent of the author. If the author themselves used a mix of three-dot and four-dot ellipses, this can give you a strong hint; otherwise you are going to have to use your best judgment. Remember: because the postprocessor has the final say, always leave a **note if there is any ambiguity.

What does it mean to end a sentence?

Final punctuation does not always require a complete sentence. When the sentence is cut off, as by an interruption, most PMs and PPs interpret that as "the end of a sentence," requiring a fourth dot. So, in:

"Arthur," I said, "I don't think you understand...."
"I understand perfectly!" he broke in.

the first sentence gets four dots even though it was interrupted rather than "finished". However, some project managers do not agree, so if there's any doubt, ask and leave a note.

Ellipsis + closing quote

A closing quote does not count as an "ending punctuation mark" under the Guidelines. A sentence that ends with an ellipsis, then a closing quote, may also need a fourth dot added, just as it would if it weren't quoted.

Closing quote + ellipsis

When an ellipsis happens after a closing quote:

of lying." ... They

opinions differ as to whether there should be a space between the closing quote and the ellipsis; ask in the project discussion and leave a **note. However, there is general agreement that the ellipsis should not be moved inside the quotation--leave it outside, with three dots, and a space afterwards.

Ellipsis followed by non-closing punctuation

This is common in bibliographies, for instance:

The means of preserving beauty ...; by a lady, &c. London, Crosby & Co., 1811.

Because the ellipsis only combines with closing punctuation, it is a three-dot and not a four-dot ellipsis; but the Guidelines also don't allow spaces before punctuation like commas and semicolons, because otherwise they might wrap to the start of the next line. So there is definitely no space afterwards; PMs disagree on whether to put one before; ask in the project discussion and leave a [**note].

"Final" punctuation in the middle of a sentence

In older texts it is common to have something that would normally be "final" punctuation occur in mid-sentence, with no capital letter following. When this includes an ellipsis either before or after:

in the world! . . . but no one

or

within me, O nymphs . . . ! within me, 

there is not a clear consensus. In most cases, the answer is to ask in the project thread and leave a **note for PP.

An easier case is when the final punctuation is a period after an abbreviation:

the last parliament, etc. ... they are of opinion that the

Here, there is no end of sentence, and there is a space between the abbreviation and the ellipsis.

Interrupted end of sentence

Another ambiguous situation:

If, in short, it is external to the terms, how can it possibly be true of them? [Is it the 'intimacy' suggested by the little word 'of,' here, which I have underscored, that is the root of Mr. Bradley's trouble?] ... If the terms from their

Here, without the bracketed aside, the Guidelines would call for the last sentence to end: "true of them?... If the terms" but due to the interruption this is not possible. The solution was to use a normally spaced three-dot ellipsis and leave a [**note] for the PP. A similar situation may arise when a bracketed footnote marker comes between the end-of-sentence punctuation and the ellipsis.

Ellipsis used for elision

Where an ellipsis is used instead of a dash to indicate letters left out of a word:

I called the next day on Mr. J... for his opinion.

treat the ellipsis as you would a dash, with no space before--but leave a [**note].

Post-Processing

The post-processor can represent an ellipsis either with three or four period/full stop characters, as in the rounds, or using the Unicode ellipsis character, "…". There are benefits to both approaches.

using three dots	using one character
Looks better when displayed in monospace font Four-dot ellipses sometimes look smoother Universal font and device support	Looks better when displayed in proportional font Four-dot ellipses can retain semantic information Support is good but may not be universal

The ellipsis character can look particularly bad in a monospace font when combined with a period to create a four-dot ellipse. For this reason, most post-processors prefer to use periods to form ellipses at least in the plain text version of a project.

If you do decide to use the ellipsis character, it is important that any four-dot ellipses are handled correctly; this means paying attention to whether the single period comes before or after the ellipsis character.

Ellipses in ppgen

This is a method that can be used with ppgen to generate ellipses using the ellipsis character in HTML and three single dots in the text output.

1. In the source file, represent each ellipsis with an opening curly brace, a ellipsis character, and a closing curly brace:

{…}

2. Add the following two dot commands to your source file:

.sr h §{…}§…§
.sr t §{…}§...§

Using the bracketed characters in the source file will ensure that the text file will be wrapped properly, because both

{…}

and

...

are three characters wide.