Talk:Ellipsis

message: The reference mark ( ※ ) as exceedingly common in Japanese documents.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.239.45.4 (talk) 05:15, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: The reference mark is covered at its own article.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:28, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Who decides what's common and uncommon?

message: Can someone add some info in the English usage section about what APA style calls for? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.151.63.3 (talk • contribs) 22:57, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There are hundreds of citation styles, and dozens of more-or-less major ones. They are not general style guides for writing English, and most of them do not even cover ellipses and other general punctuation matters.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:29, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: APA usage

message: This article discusses mainly the "three dots" ellipsis but it leaves what an ellipsis actually is to the end. Wouldn't it be better to bring the discussion of the grammatical aspect of an ellipsis to the head of the article, followed by how an ellipsis is represented and when it needs to be represented? Alternatively, how about two articles? :-)
* Elliptical construction and Ellipsis (figure of speech) could be merged together. However, they don't really have any place in this article (I am referring to merge tags present in this revision). This article appears to be mostly about the punctuation and the modern usage thereof, whereas the other two articles are about the grammatical constructions. --60.240.231.200 02:29, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Grammatical versus typographical ellipsis

message: Is the "In grammar of languages" part any different from the "figure of speech" part? If not, can it be removed? -- Oliver P. 03:21 May 7, 2003 (UTC)
:Actually I wasn't sure mention in figure of speech part. I just remembered I learned ellipsis in my grammar class so I added a mention about it from my memory. I am glad if you or anyone can integrate them into one. -- Taku 03:48 May 7, 2003 (UTC)
:: I might leave it to someone more expert on these matters. :) -- Oliver P. 03:57 May 7, 2003 (UTC)
Moved thisIn grammar of languages, ellipsis is some way to explain some kind of omission. e.g.
:"Wikipedia is a great encyclopedia ever created"
can be seen as a short way to say
:"Wikipedia is a great encyclopedia that is ever created"
But this can be explained without ellipsis. "Created" can be regarded as past participle, so it modifies a noun encylopedia just like adjective does. to here. It seems to me the first example is just an incomplete sentence rather than really being an ellipsis, and the rest of it is just a debate. 
I also moved this here
Some style guide says in quotes you need to surround ellipses with brackets to show it was modified from the original., because I think it confuses ellipsis points (used to indicate omissions) with interpolated material (which is inserted between brackets).  Not to say that SOME style manual doesn't suggest it, but it would be good to know which one.  And, for what it's worth, the Chicago Manual of Style says use dots/ellipsis points/suspension points, never asterisks/stars. -- Someone else 04:53 May 7, 2003 (UTC)
:I was wondering about the asterisks, thinking that perhaps some other languages use those? But I've certainly never seen it in any form of English. -- John Owens 05:03 May 7, 2003 (UTC)
::Someone must do it or we wouldn't be warned against it<G>. Like you, I wonder who it is! -- Someone else 05:19 May 7, 2003 (UTC)
----
: For those who are unfamiliar with 18th century Scots dialect, maybe this will help - Burns is saying "Is there (a)n honest(man among us) who hangs his head because of his Poverty".  The poet uses ellipsis to personalise and highlight "honest Poverty".  A good example.
Now, for those who are unfamiliar with 21st century English - can I suggest that the encyclopedia example should be:
::"Wikipedia is the greatest encyclopedia ever created" can be seen as a short way to say
::"Wikipedia is the greatest encyclopedia that has ever "been" created"
Tiles 07:40 May 7, 2003 (UTC)
:Again, though, "Wikipedia is the greatest encyclopedia ever created" is a perfectly complete sentence on its own. "Created" is a past participle modified by the adverb "ever" and modifying in turn the noun "encyclopedia". "Encyclopedias ever created" specified a set of encyclopedias, and the sentence says that Wikipedia is the greatest of these. I've removed the example from the article:
::“Wikipedia is the greatest encyclopedia ever created”
:::which can be interpreted as a short way to say: “Wikipedia is the greatest encyclopedia that has ever been created”
If someone wants to mangle this into a better example, go for it, but there are already a few there.
BTW, I believe the asterisks are generally used between paragraphs in block-quotes.  They can also be used to denote section breaks, often in fiction (eg, Through the Looking Glass), though this may not be an actual "ellipsis".  --Spikey 23:24, Jan 13, 2005 (UTC)
:I agree that the thee spaced stars as a section break is an elipsis. It is almost exclusively used to indicate time has passed, and the author omitted the events that occured in that time period. IT basicly indicates the ommision of events, like the elipsis indicates the ommision of words. 65.41.53.137 00:28, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Grammatical ellipsis 

message: "...an ellipsis is used enclosed in brackets ([ ]) or, more often, slashes (//) if one wishes to omit a part of an original quotation."
Is there any basis for the "more often" claim here? In my experience omissions/deletions are marked with a bare ellipsis or, more often, with an ellipsis enclosed in brackets in publications. I have seen the occasional use of slashes in informal text like email or some manuscripts, but in those cases it seems to have been for authoring convenience, not as a typographical habit (like the use of slashes to denote italics). Also the entry on brackets  includes its usage in quotes, something the entry on slashes does not.
I'm not sure where the author got this statement about enclosing an ellipsis in brackets. I always understood that a simple ellipsis, without brackets, is used to indicate an omission. That is what the Chicago Manual of Style (which is the style manual referenced in the same paragraph) recommends. In fact, Chicago does not even mention brackets in that context. (I looked this up in both the 1993 14th edition and the 1969 12th edition—14th: 10.47–10.63; 12th: 10.31–10.40) Brackets are used when replacing original text with one's own words. Perhaps the brackets/slashes usage is British practice? Mateo SA | talk 04:21, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)
:Brackets are required by some academic citation styles in which no editorial insertions can be made without square brackets.  As for slashes, that's just internet nonsense.  There might be some kind of markup situation in which backslash escaping would be required (because "." by itself meant something in the language of the parser at hand), but that's nothing to do with everyday writing, nor with the ellipsis itself.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:38, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ellipses in quotations 

message: I would suggest splitting this article into ellipsis (punctuation) and ellipsis (rhetoric) with ellipsis being a disambiguation pages. This article is already big enough that one has to scroll few screens of text to find out that it is also about the rhetorical figure of speech. Also, maybe more importantly, it causes problems with interwiki links. For example in Polish ellipsis as punctuation is wielokropek but ellipsis as the rhetorical figure is elipsa which also means ellipse, the flattened circle. Rafał Pocztarski 05:05, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Splitting this article

message: This article will probably need sections for differences in other languages like those in the quotation mark article. The differences are mostly in spaces and brackets. I will split this article into sections and write about Polish rules. Rafał Pocztarski 05:12, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think that ellipsis in other languages ought to be on this page at all. That discussion should be made elsewhere. Brian Miller98.67.160.222 (talk) 13:55, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Except not.  Our norm in articles like this is to cover all languages. If we have enough material for a stand-alone article on English usage in detail, we split that off to a separate article, e.g. Quotation marks in English.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:45, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Ellipsis (punctuation) in other languages

message: I've done a fair bit of digging and have been unable to find answers to these questions:  
1. Most computer fonts these days seem to include the ellipsis as a single character that displays as three dots. The dots are often smaller and more crowded than the dots that would be displayed if one typed 3 periods. Is the ellipsis - a single character within a computer font - included in computer fonts as a work-around that prevents an ellipsis from being mangled by a line break?
2. Was the ellipsis a "cast-in-metal" character during the Linotype days, or did the Linotype operator make each one up as needed, and according to the applicable style book? Some style books call for the ellipsis to be spaced more widely than single en spaces, much different than the spacing of the character found in typical computer fonts, which are sometimes narrower than el spaces.
3. How does one reconcile the three-dot and four-dot ellipses with the fact that (at least among the fonts I looked at) computer fonts only supply a three-dot ellipsis character? Setting a three-dot-ellipsis character - preceded or followed by a standard period - looks downright ugly.
It might be worth mentioning the use of ellipses in writing for broadcast news. I once read news on the radio, back in the Teletype days, from copy provided by a special broadcast news service. It was not uncommon for ellipses to be used as the end-punctuation for every sentence, except the last one, in a paragraph. Since spoken-word English is basically punctuated by inflection and pauses, the ellipses - used in this way - made the reading of news copy much easier than standard punctuation might.
I think it would be useful (or at least interesting) information for the article. Thanks for any wisdom or history anyone can provide.
:Too difficult to answer?--Hhielscher 17:25, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Ellipsis as a Character in Fonts 

message: This article has no examples about the use of space after the ellipsis when the ellipsis is used to indicate an omission or continuation at the beginning of the sentence. Is there a space between the ellipsis and the first word, or not?
For example, in a TV caption (subtitles), which of these is correct:
- So, we were going...
- Really?
- ... home with our dogs, when it happened.
or
- So, we were going...
- Really?
- ...home with our dogs, when it happened.
:Neither. It should be:
:: - So, we were going ...
:: - Really?
:: - ... home with our dogs, when it happened.
: because "going" isn't a truncated/interrupted word, but a complete one. If it were interrupted in mid-word, it would be:
:: - So, we were go...
:: - Really?
:: - ...ing home with our dogs, when it happened.
:  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  19:48, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Space after ellipsis at beginning of phrase

message: While the article discusses the relevance of spaces in relation to the ellipses being replacement for either a word or letters, there is almost no mention of the use of a space to imply continued action or making an implication. Rather than the ellipses replacing letters or words, they are often used for implying a continuation or making an implication. The space for missing words and no space for missing letters makes sense because words are separated by spaces. However, in the implied situation this logic does not apply. My experience is that implied action or implications do not use a space between the last word and the ellipses, but someone with better knowledge should state the correct fashion in each of the cases.
For example, in neither of the cases below are letters or words missing:
- I don't know what to say...   Here there are no missing letters or words, but the reader knows the author would like to add something if they could find the words, or if the situation allowed. Often the author knows what they want to say, but does not want to state it clearly for risk of offense etc, so ellipses imply that there is something further.
- It is starting...     Here there is not one specific set of words missing, but an implication that there is something continuing. Perhaps what follows is positive or negative, reassuring or threatening and maybe the reader can guess from the context, but in some cases the implication that something continues is the only information imparted.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.121.145.66 (talk) 08:51, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rules for positioning of spaces either side of the ellipses 

message: Do we have a source confirming that "…" to indicate speechlessness is really from Japanese? Seems to me that that was a comix convention long before manga started getting any sort of widespread play in the West. Can someone dig up old "Blondie" strips or something?—Wiki Wikardo
the earliest i can remember seeing this used is in old nintendo games. though since they were mostly made in japan anyway (and then hilariously translated), this doesn't tell much. it made it to the US before the manga craze, though. PS i love your username! --dan 07:04, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Use . –EdC 21:52, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

text: So why do you put your comment here then? See further the last sentence of the first paragraph of the article.  --Lambiam 08:05, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ellipsis in Japanese 

message: I've added a Cite Needed flag to the claim that the ellipsis is also known as an ellipse.  I have never seen this before in my life, and if no citation is forthcoming I'm inclined to remove the interjection entirely. --Llewdor 23:50, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Recently, I've been referring to a singular ellipsis as an ellipse; however, I seem to recall primarily calling it an ellipsis before. I think at some point, someone falsely corrected me (or maybe I just got confused in a math class) that an ellipse is the proper name for an ellipsis.  I have definitely heard others use ellipse instead of ellipsis, but perhaps this is a result of miscommunication and misunderstandings. After having read this article, I now believe some may improperly or informally refer to ellipsis as ellipse. In defense of using ellipse, I didn't spend time searching for a source that supports the idea that ellipse is a proper substitute for ellipsis, but a source may exist. FalseLobster 04:57, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: An ellipse is a [mathematical] shape. I am going to stick my neck out and say that it is never an alternative term for an ellipsis. I will gladly retract this should I have reliable cause to do so...Mpassman 18:22, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The use of the word "ellipse" in place of the word "ellipsis" is actually quite silly. Dale A. Wood, M.A. in mathematics, the University of Alabama at Huntsville.98.67.160.222 (talk) 14:04, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ellipse?

message: It needs a sigma to mean sum, at the moment it just lists numbers...
Mpassman 20:39, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: IMO, the sigma shouldn't be there. The fact you are using plus signs implies a sum. If you were going to use a sigma, you'd use \sigma_{i=1}{100} i (LaTeX notation) Rawling4851 23:20, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Maths bit wrong 

message: Prolific use of arbitrary ellipses should be substituted with "ksl" in order to avoid confusion with actual, grammatically correct instances of ellipses within the document in question.
What is ksl and why? Google yields nothing relevant. Wolfmankurd 20:52, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: ksl?

message: why is "^ Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind, Miyazaki Hayao" a reference?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.142.113.23 (talk) 03:13, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I assume because "...inanimate objects "speaking" the ellipsis" occurred in the film."  Can anyone confirm this? (A quick glance through the script  revealed nothing to me, maybe I'll have time to watch the movie later and if I notice get a screen-cap) --Stradenko (talk) 15:11, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmmm, Nausicaä was also a manga. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 21:27, 8 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: references

message: Something leads me to feel as though the "Cinema" section should not be in this article, which is clearly about typography . . . .  Perhaps it should be moved to the article on ellipsis (narrative device).
Nkovrig (talk) 05:43, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I've removed this out-of-place section and added a line to Ellipsis (narrative device).  --Lambiam 15:19, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  In Cinema? 

message: :Normally these dots should only be used where the pattern to be followed is clear, the exception being to show the continuation of a transcendental number such as: \pi=3.14159265\ldots
::I'm changing transcendental number to irrational number. Only rational numbers show  set pattern in their decimal expansions. The irrationals include the transcendentals.  —Tamfang (talk) 02:29, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: In other words, the trancendental numbers are a subset of the irrational numbers -- to be precise. Also, "Rational numbers show set pattern in their decimal expansions," is correct English. In such sentences, you can choose between a). Everything plural, or b). Everything singular. Mixing up singular forms with plural forms leads to a lot of confusion, and it looks quare, too.98.67.160.222 (talk) 14:20, 12 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Irrationals vs. Transcendentals 

message: The Chinese version of this page implies that ellipsis in Chinese should always occupy the same horizontal space as two characters, thus rendering dots on the baseline is considered wrong. Zat'n'ktel (talk) 05:20, 2 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Horizontal position of ellipsis in Chinese 

message: This book seems to recommend this character (U+0085) instead of the usual U+2026. What the heck is that thing? —Telofy (talk) 10:07, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Try to find and fix it in the original (unfinished) book. Don't use third-party websites at all. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 10:59, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

text: U+0085 is not a graphic character. Someone must have confused it with 0x85 in CP1252.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.142.91.192 (talk) 14:46, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  U+0085 

message: Ellipsized; ellipsised, what is it? mystery (talk) 03:12, August 10th, 2011 (UTC)
: Ellipsis is a noun, not a verb. Perhaps you're looking for the adjectival form: elliptical.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.47.52.147 (talk) 08:01, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: First, we'd have to verb it. Then we could past tense it. :) Stevebroshar (talk) 15:37, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:   past tense? 

message: I know I never put spaces between the dots, but I understand it is a convention sometimes. This page seems to have an identity crisis when it comes to this though, with both styles strewn about all over the page. The infobox display on the right side has the variants listed, so one style should probably be adopted and people should stop changing them back and forth. Someone added spaces in the big ellipsis in the infobox and it created some visual snafu where the middle dot was lower on my screen (Firefox 11.0, 1024x768 res) so I edited out the spaces. Jargon777 Talk    15:08, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: You could see the initial state of four presentation and a subsequent edit of SpaceCow4 which blurred that arrangement. I purposely used non-breaking spaces in the main presentation. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 19:52, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  Spaces between the dots is absolutely wrong (and yes, I know the MoS wants spaces between the dots. The MoS is wrong). Remember, an ellipsis is a single ligature. It is convention, when the single typographical ligature is unavailable, to substitute three dots, but they should no more be separated with spaces, as if an ellipsis is simply a string of three separate characters than the emdash substitute double-dash should. Among other problems is the potential for a line to wrap in the middle of an ellipsis, and the visual confusion the extra white space causes. Most glaringly, it makes it impossible to visually distinguish between a period-ellipsis and an ellipsis-period, which in AP style would be ". ..." and "... .", respectively, but in MoS style would be ". . . ." in both cases.
114.47.52.147 (talk) 07:59, 9 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spaces between periods 

message: Ellipses without inner spaces (before and after the second period) can come with or without a leading space and with and without a trailing space as well.
So an ellipsis connected to a letter (or word) without a space symbolizes one ore more omitted letters. "blue..." opens the meanings of "blueberry" and "blueprint", while "blue ..." (with a space) shows that at least a word is omitted and complets to "blue sky" or "blue water".
(At least in German.)
To build compact grafic text logos, sometimes this space is omitted, although this rule would request a space. For instance: Wetten,_dass..? --Helium4 (talk) 17:46, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Leading and trailing spaces 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on Ellipsis. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add  after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/20150315042147/http://www.naropa.edu/nwc/documents/citationcomparisonsp11.pdf to http://www.naropa.edu/nwc/documents/citationcomparisonsp11.pdf
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.
Cheers. —cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 00:55, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Such spaces should be omitted, however, according to the Associated Press, whose typographic aesthetics remain mired in the era of newsprint. 
The way this paragraph is set up, it creates a false equivalence between Chicago and the AP, by neglecting to mention the constraints of medium. 
But unfortunately, the mandate of Wikipedia does not extend into being the reader's friend, so my proposed addition above is a hundred yards offside. 
* How Music Works (2012) by David Byrne 
An exquisite disquisition into how various genres of music are dictated in large measure by the consumption venue: classical music's enduring marriage to the concert hall, rap's Mayfly hook-up to the boombox lowrider. 
Thus the lingering smell of the AP's fishwrap aesthetics. — MaxEnt 18:03, 2 August 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Between the lines 

message: Hi all, the image used for the 'usage in computer menus' section seems to violate the ellipses usage guideline it accompanies. Why is the 'Open' option not 'Open...'? According to the text, it's a command that requires further user input, and therefore should have trailing ellipses. 103.253.94.156 (talk) 01:11, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: You are assuming that that open command requires user input. I think that open does require input in most apps, but not necessarily. Thing is, this subtlety of UI design is 1) lost on users; they don't even see it or understand it if they do see it and 2) misunderstood by developers who invariable use it wrong. It's an abomination :) Stevebroshar (talk) 15:35, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Drop-down menu image 

message: OED apparently uses ".." without any spaces around (example). Our article doesn't mention such kind of punctuation at all, so I'm wondering whether this corresponds to any standard in principle or is just their own quirk (then why?!). — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 11:32, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Couldn't this just be an error? To cover this usage in Wikipedia, we would need to source it from a style manual. Peter Brown (talk) 21:19, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:  A very systematic error... :–) I see it in all their articles that I've checked in the online edition. I don't have a paper copy, but a scan from a very old edition shows the same double dot, although more loosely typeset. It's also weird that their article "ellipsis" doesn't define it as a punctuation mark, only mentioning in that sense that it's an obsolete name for the dash (for comparison, "colon" does include "punctuation-mark consisting of two dots"). And "Key to symbols and other conventions" says that "… (within cited text) indicates an omitted part of a quotation" using a precomposed glyph, rendered as three dots (I'm wondering how it looked on paper). So regarding a style manual, my question was exactly that: where they've got this strange thing from and why? — Mikhail Ryazanov (talk) 06:19, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unspaced double dot