Ellipses Demystified

I've noticed a trend in student writing to over-use the ellipsis (plural ellipses), also known as the suspension point, the points of ellipsis, the periods of ellipsis or just plain old dot-dot-dot.

The main problem, as I see it, is that students often cannot discern between formal or academic writing (that requires ellipses to indicate omission of material), and informal writing (that allows ellipses to suggest emotions).

Let's start with ellipses in a formal context. The word ellipses in Ancient Greek means omission, or falling short. It's required in academic and legal writing to indicate that a word, sentence or section has been omitted when the writer is copying/quoting text. An ellipsis is written as three periods.

For example, see how I use two ellipses to summarize a sentence without changing its meaning.

Original sentence: The candidates worked a long, hard, excruciatingly demanding campaign throughout the entire month of May.

Summary: The candidates worked a . . . demanding campaign throughout . . . May.

Notice that I've left a space on either side of the ellipses, and separated each dot or period with a space. Be aware, however, that some publishing houses prefer no spaces between the dots, and write ellipses like this: The candidates worked a ... demanding campaign throughout ... May.

But it gets trickier.

It's not necessary to use an ellipsis at the beginning of a sentence, even if we've omitted one or more words.

Incorrect:  . . . candidates worked . . . throughout May.
Correct:  [C]andidates worked . . . throughout May. (I'll address square brackets in a later post).

And if we omit one or more words at the end of a sentence, we add a period after the ellipsis.

 The candidates worked a . . . demanding campaign . . . .

That's right. Type four periods in a row, with spaces between.

What if we're omitting more than one word from our original source? Then we must place the ellipsis between the preceding and following sentences, with a space on either side, to avoid confusion.

Example: All candidates expect to be on the road for weeks at a time. . . . A political career must take its toll on family life.

In the above passage, I've used an ellipsis to indicate that I've omitted one or more sentences that fell between the word time and the word A.

There's one more handy dandy application of ellipses in this omission business. If we want to show we've omitted one or more paragraphs, we place four dots or periods (presumably an ellipsis and a period) on a separate line, indented to match the rest of the text.

Like this.

. . . .

See?


Next time I'll address the other uses of the ellipsis, namely its role in informal writing.