Re: Ellipses

Subject: Re: Ellipses
From: Dick Margulis <margulis -at- fiam -dot- net>
To: dmbrown -at- brown-inc -dot- com, tECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 06:53:05 -0500

dmbrown -at- brown-inc -dot- com wrote:

I would definitely omit the surrounding spaces when using the actual ellipsis character.

Really? In every font, in every application? If you do this in Word, for example, the line will not break after the ellipsis, forcing the line to break before the preceding word. If you use non-breaking space, ellipsis, regular space, you avoid that problem. And in some environments (Arial Black or Tahoma Bold headings in PowerPoint, for example), it just looks too cramped (to my eyes) when it is set tight.

On the other hand, in a monospace font (and thus in email and list postings), I don't even try to use the 0133 character, because it's visually indistinguishable from an underscore to a lot of eyes. The character is _only_ usable in a proportional font IMHO.


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.


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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
Re: Ellipses: From: dmbrown

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