Re: Ellipses

Subject: Re: Ellipses
From: dmbrown -at- brown-inc -dot- com
To: TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 23:45:11 -0800

Dick Margulis wrote:


Personally I think the ellipsis looks better with a space on either side of it rather than tight up against a word...

I would definitely omit the surrounding spaces when using the actual ellipsis character. (On the PC, that's Alt+0133 […].) I don't care much for the ellipsis character, though, so I tene to just type three periods, as shown above.

The Chicago Manual of Style shows ellipses that look more like separate periods with intervening spaces, and that seems like a perfectly acceptable way of doing it in a proportional font. As Dick suggests, though, be sure to use nonbreaking spaces, as follows:

nonbreaking space, period,
nonbreaking space, period,
nonbreaking space, period,
regular space

That allows the line to break after the ellipsis, if necessary, but *never* within it...and not before it, either, unless you force a break, out of necessity.

--David

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Follow-Ups:

References:
Legal English (was RE: Using M-dash and N-dash?): From: Downing, David
Legal English? (take II): From: Geoff Hart
Ellipses: From: Zola
Re: Ellipses: From: Dick Margulis

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