Did you know . . . that the ellipses (. . .) is to be thought of as a word in the sentence? Therefore . . . it is given its own distance from the other words in the sentence. Equality, you know.
And did you know . . . that Word's little habit of auto-pushing three dots typed in a row together . . . is wrong? They need s p a c e.
Ellipsi. I had no idea I was doing you wrong. I'll do my best to make it right.
Learning as I go. Back to editing . . .
9 comments:
I love ellipses. I can't help it. Although I'm helping it whether I want to or not. Did you know that one ellipses counts as three words? Yep!
Great post!
I had also read that if you use an elipses at the end of a sentence (as opposed to in between two thoughts), you leave out the space and put a period at the end. Like this....
But then I just went to try to verify that and I can't. Does anyone else punctuate this way? I've seen it both ways in published books.
I love grammatical nuances. What's wrong with me? :)
Amy
LT, I love them , too. There's just so much that makes one take pause . . .
Amy, I have heard that as well, but I don't see it used. I was taught that if the thought has ended, but the voice fades, to use the period at the end. If the thought is still being considered, then to leave it off. It's a little obscure, if you ask me.
*shrug*
Fascinating! So it's space dot space dot space dot space? I had no idea. I'm going to add that to my autocorrect list right away!
Just one more thing Word screws up! The whole auto correct feature on there drives me crazy.
There is the funky "sentence finished gets a period, then three dots" ellipses (which then looks like 4 dots but w/out a space before the first).
But I've only ever seen that in nonfiction when they're using a quote and taking part of the quote out. The ellipses mark the deletion, but you keep the period on the end of the sentence before the deletion. (Am I making any sense?)
Also, yes, Word is stupid.
Just had a little look through your blog and really like what I'm reading! Some great advice in this post too, I didn't realise that elipsi were supposed to have spaces in between each dot. . .
I've also just taken the lucky position of 90th follower!
Katie
Ooh Ellipsi. . . you are my best friend. I love that word! I'm going to be saying it all day . . . Ellipsi. Thanks for the lesson! :)
SF and Sherrie, is it bad that mostly ignore my auto correct? I'm beginning to think not . . .
Annette, actually that makes sense. Thanks, I forgot about the quotes things and left-out words.
Katie, welcome, and thanks for being number 90! Salute!
Shelli, you are cute.
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