"It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them" ... Friedrich Nietzsche
Ellipsis
4 October 2007, 18:27
An ellipsis [ … ] proves to be a handy device when you’re quoting material and you want to omit some words. The ellipsis consists of three evenly spaced dots (periods) with spaces between the ellipsis and surrounding letters or other marks.
If the omission comes after the end of a sentence, the ellipsis will be placed after the period, making a total of four dots. … See how that works? Notice that there is no space between the period and the last character of the sentence.
In mid-sentence, a space should appear between the first and last ellipsis marks and the surrounding letters. If a quotation is meant to trail off, leave a space between the last letter and the first ellipsis mark but do not include a period with the ellipsis marks.
If words are left off at the end of a sentence, and that is all that is omitted, indicate the omission with ellipsis marks (preceded and followed by a space) and then indicate the end of the sentence with a period … . If one or more sentences are omitted, end the sentence before the ellipsis with a period and then insert your ellipsis marks with a space on both sides. …
When words at the beginning of a quoted sentence are omitted, it is not necessary to use an ellipsis to indicate that words have been left out when that fragment can fit into the flow of your text. An exception: in a blockquoted fragment, use an ellipsis to indicate an omission. However, if the material quoted can be read as a complete sentence, simply capitalize the first word of the material and leave out the ellipsis marks.
The plural of ellipsis is ellipses (handy to remember when you’re playing Scrabble), but the points themselves (the dots that make up the ellipsis) are called ellipsis points or ellipsis marks.
One last grammar note:
I would like to point out that British English now no longer places a full stop [i.e., a period] after an abbreviated title. So Mr. Smith is now normally written as Mr Smith, and Dr. Smith is now written as Dr Smith.
Similarly, other abbreviations no longer place full stops between
letters. So the qualification, Bachelor of Arts, is written as BA, not
B.A. It may well be that American English has maintained the tradition of the full stop, but it is no longer needed on the other side of the Atlantic and is now accepted as correct usage. I am not sure about Canadian English … any ideas?
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