I was wondering if anyone knows what this means/why people do it? It seems to replace periods and commas. Does it arise from people typing as they’d speak (i.e. taking a breath now etc.)? Or did it arise from people on chat boards doing the human equivalent of showing an hourglass symbol?
I have heard from someone on another board that he’s been online for ~15 years and it was around then.
Btw, this isn’t a discussion about whether people should do it or not. If the mods think that this is more of an IMHO, then sorry and please move it.
It’s called an ellipsis, it’s not new and has nothing to do with using the web. I don’t know when it was first used. It’s often used to indicate that some irrelevant text has been omitted from a quotation.
Sorry … I should have been more specific … I’m referring to posts where you see people talking like this … although I might not have the exact format right … not that I think that there is one .
Hi Muttrox. I was always taught that it was exactly 3 dots. I’m not saying you are wrong, I’m genuienly interested in knowing. Is there a site you can point me to?
P.S. More than 3 dots has been one of my pet peeves. I see it everywhere.
Well, as Bromley mentions, there are the ellipses that we use in writing, and there are the dots we use when chatting, emailing, or posting.
The latter is basically intended to convey free association, of sorts. The dots indicate a shift in the focus or attention of the writer as he or she meanders from point to point.
That appears to be an in-house style guide for the Department of Energy, erislover. It’s good that they’ve decided to utilize ellipses in that manner, but it’s not necessarily “the law.”
In fact, I’d disagree with their use of four periods. If an ellipsis is ending a sentence, the sentence is trailing off. If a period ends a sentence, one has reached a full stop. These are mutually exclusive situations.
Oh, okay. Let’s consult, uh, the Department of Justice then. That cite should be good enough, seems to fit “the law”. I mean, who really has the last word on this?
When used in formal writing, the ellipsis is used when quoting, and indicates that some of the original text is missing. In dialogue or narrative, it donates a pause or a trailing off. Incidentally, if you are typing on a Mac, the ellipsis character can be made by holding the option key and typing a semicolon, instead of typing the period three times.
This is just me, but I would consider a cite from Strunk and White, the MLA, or the AP Stylebook as “the last word.” It’s basically just consensus, I guess–more people use those style guides, so they’re given more weight and respect.
No, erislover has it correct. It’s standard for an ellipsis to consist of three dots, but when only the end of a sentence is deleted, then the period is included, making four dots.
This site gives the rules from the Gregg Reference Manual. IIRC, this is also the recommendantion of the Chicago Manual of Style.
3 dots, or four to end a sentece in quoted material, which is really the only time you would formally use it. My citation is the head of our English dept here at school (I am a high school teacher). You can consult an MLA manual if you need a cite that bad.
erislover has it right for that source. This is not a rule on which everyone has agreed.
In fact, the Gregg cite says, “If a quotation is meant to trail off (as in Juan’s bemused thought), leave a space between the last letter and the first ellipsis mark but do not include a period with the ellipsis marks.”
Bolding mine; this would seem to indicate that only three dots are used, not four.
(I don’t agree with their example, however; I think there should be a comma before the ending quote mark.)
Anyway, no, I can’t provide a cite. We’re basically talking about two things, here: the usage of the ellipses to denote something that’s been removed, as in a quote, and the usage to denotate a trailing off.
The OP seemed to be concerned with the latter; that is, with posts/emails/whatnot in which the writer kind of trails off, rather than posts in which he or she is quoting someone but not including the entire quote.
For the quotes, I definitely agree with you in that a period should come after the ellipsis (provided the ellipsis is ending a sentence). But for a simple trailing off, the period’s not needed. Of course, when one posts or emails, one’s not necessarily constrained by the grammar peccadilloes of the real world…
I used to be one of those offenders the OP referred to. I would constantly use “…” (usually 4, sometimes 3, sometimes 5 ) to break up sentences instead of periods and spaces. I started doing it while I was doing tech support for Gateway, when I was logging calls - I’m not exactly sure why, but I think because it was harder for me to pick out the salient points of previous calls when I was working with a customer over the course of several calls. If you pulled up one of my calls, the text of the call might look a lot like this:
Because we used so many abbreviations and shorthand, it would often be confusing if a period at then end of an abbreviation was a period for the abbreviation or the end of a sentence. By using multiple periods, it was a lot easier to distinguish when one thought ended and another began. The main reason for using all the shorthand was that we had to be typing - documenting the call - at the same time we were troubleshooting so we wouldn’t waste 5 or 10 minutes in idle typing up the call.
When chatting or posting to a message board, I used to use whatever shorthand was popular in that forum, and used the same technique to make it clear when I was at the end of a thought/sentence. However, I now tend to spell everything out and adhere more closely to standard punctuation and spacing practices.
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