Those Three Weird Dots
Hi, Don,
I’ve got a question on the silly string of dots we use for pregnant pauses with the weird name of ellipses. When used in a sentence, do they need a space on each side, on only one side or on neither side?
Kelly
Hi, Kelly...
Strictly speaking, the three dots are an ellipsis if they indicate that text has been omitted from a quotation. Otherwise they’re suspension points.
An ellipsis takes a space before and after:
“The time has come, the Walrus said,
To talk of ... cabbages and kings”An ellipsis may optionally be enclosed in brackets: [...]
Suspension points occur at the end of a line of dialogue. They indicate that the speaker has paused to think or do something or is waiting for an answer. For example:
“True, true...” replied the BEM, morphing smoothly into a suave-looking spacehand who might have just sauntered out of a bar in Marsport.
Suspension points have no space before but do have a space following. They “float,” like the ellipsis, only in British punctuation. The example is taken from our sample page.
Don
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