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RSSIn Search of a 4-Dot Ellipsis
Reader Vic Shane writes:
…my editor told me there is a four-dot ellipsis that is not the same thing as the three-dot version. When I went to Journalism school (32 years ago), we only had the three-dot variety, as far as I know. The extra dot came from somewhere and I’d like to get to the bottom of it. I won’t rest until I know why that dot is floating around in the ethers looking for a sentence!
Strictly speaking, there’s no such thing as a 4-dot ellipsis. Omission of material in a quotation is indicated by three dots. When a fourth dot appears, it indicates that the omitted material included at least one sentence.
The Chicago Manual of Style describes the use of the ellipsis at great length, referring to the “three dot, four dot, and rigorous” methods (11.51 ff).
Spaces or no spaces?
Not all style guides agree as to whether or not the dots in the ellipsis should have spaces between them.
Chicago Manual of Style
An ellipsis—the omission of a word, phrase, line, paragraph, or more from a quoted passage—is indicated by ellipsis points (or dots), not by asterisks. Ellipsis points are three spaced periods (. . .), sometimes preceded or followed by other punctuation. They must always appear together on the same line, but any preceding punctuation may appear at the end of the line above (see also 11.64).
MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers
For an ellipsis within a sentence, use three periods with a space before each and a space after the last ( . . . ).
Merriam-Webster distinguishes between “ellipsis marks [ ... ]” and “suspension points
[ . . . ].”
According to the Wikipedia article on ellipsis,
In legal writing in the United States, Rule 5.3 in the Bluebook citation guide governs the use of ellipses and requires a space before the first dot and between the two subsequent dots. If an ellipsis ends the sentence, then there are three dots, each separated by a space, followed by the final punctuation.
AP style, on the other hand, leaves out the spaces ( … ).
Ellipsis and unfinished thought
When a speaker trails off, leaving a sentence unfinished, three dots are used:
“I never meant . . .”
When a quotation ends with an ellipsis
CMS
When three [dots] are used, space occurs both before the first dot and after the final dot. When four are used, the first dot is a true period—that is, there is no space between it and the preceding word.
MLA
When the ellipsis coincides with the end of your sentence, use three periods with a space before each following a sentence period–that is, four periods, with no space before the first or after the last.
Illustration
Here is an illustration of the use of ellipsis points to indicate 1) omission of words in a sentence; 2) omission of an entire sentence, and 3) ending the quotation with an ellipsis.
Original Passage
One further habit which was somewhat weakened, although by no means broken, was that of combining native words into self-interpreting compounds. The extent to which words like bookhouse or boatswain entered into Old English has been pointed out above. The practice was not abandoned in Middle English but in many cases where a new word could have been easily formed on the native model, a ready-made French word was borrowed instead. –Baugh, A History of the English Language (221).
Abridgment
“One further habit which was somewhat weakened . . . was that of combining words into self-interpreting compounds. . . . The practice was not abandoned. . . .”
The web abounds with discussions of the ellipsis. Here are some links.
The Elusive Ellipsis (DWT)
The OWL Help Nest (scroll down)
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I fundamentally disagree with the premise of putting spaces in between the dots of an ellipsis. The ellipsis is a symbol and character in its own right. So rules for punctuation within are ridiculous, no?
Your final example states to add a space between the elipsis and a stop period, yet shows just the opposite. Which is right?
I agree with Dan. I don’t know how or when the practice of putting spaces between the dots began, but I was taught in typing class (1966) to put one space before … and one space after.
I have have (jokingly) complained that mystery writers did it . . . to increase the sense of . . . surprise, instead of using the ellipsis indicate deleted material.
Maybe not using spaces within the ellipsis came from newspaper English, where space equals wasted money.
Here’s one non-technical reason why we use the extra spaces. Many word processors will convert three periods to an ellipsis by squeezing them together. The extra spaces prevent this from happening. When typing on a typewriter (in 1966), this did not happen.
Here’s another. The spaced dots of the ellipsis look better on the page than squeezed-together dots that have a space on either side.
Dan and Deborah, an ellipsis is by definition “3 spaced periods;” therefore, a space is added before and after the ellipsis, and the spaces within occur as part of the mark itself.
It DOES look better on the page to have the dots spaced rather than squeezed together; however, electronic “typing” allows the typist to make all 3 dots with one keystroke, and does not space them. In proofreading commercial work, I have found that this can lead to some odd-looking lines of print. Fortunately, my colleagues who actually do the manipulation of electronic files are usually able to “fix” ellipses to look all right (don’t ask me what the keyboard commands are).
When I was an editor of a Law Review back in my student days, things like the diference between a three-dot and a four-dot ellipsis were critical to us.
As you’ve said, the difference is the placement in the sentence. Three dots shows that something was deleted. If the sentence ends at that point, there still needs to be a period.
(In the Law Review style books, we did not have a space bnetween the three dots and the final period. Perhaps they do now.)
I fundamentally disagree with the premise of putting spaces in between the dots of an ellipsis. The ellipsis is a symbol and character in its own right. So rules for punctuation within are ridiculous, no?
Yes. Especially when there’s an ellipsis character available (”…”), so there are no “.”s at all. And putting a space between the ellipsis and the period at the end of a sentence screws up the spacing (”… .” vs. “….”)
If you were using a typewriter (a real one, from the early cretaceous period, that just hammers out what you type, with no intelligence at all(!)), you’d want to space the dots, and then you obviously want a space between the ellipsis and the period as well—but people don’t live in caves nowadays, either.
Chicago Manual of Style speaks of the “three and four dot method” to describe the practice of using the period plus an ellipsis at the end of a full sentence and just the ellipsis in the middle of a sentence, which may have led to the “four-dot ellipsis” confusion.
Also, while I like the spaces within the ellipsis, there should not be a space before the period itself in the four-dot manifestation, as there is in your post.
Nice post, Miriam. I agree: CMS is clear that there is no space between the end of the sentence and the period, thereby rendering “Her voice trailed off . . . . ” as “Her voice trailed off. . . . ” (no space between “off” and the first dot, which is the sentence’s full stop).
Thanks for all the comments. They’ve persuaded me that the original version of this post was murky and inaccurate. Since I don’t want anything like that hanging about in the Archives, I’ve revised it.
There is no such a thing as a …. four dot ellipsis