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Showing posts with label Ellipses. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ellipses. Show all posts

Friday, October 16, 2009

Ellipses, and the proper format

In the final revisions of my first book, one of my readers/editors thought I'd incorrectly formatted ellipses, and I had to check the current rules, so here's what I found:

First of all, what are they?

Ellipses are the ". . ." you often see in writing which indicate material was omitted from a quote, or in creative writing, sometimes they are simply used for a long pause.

Formatting:

-Put a space on either side and one between each dot
e.g. He was going to . . . do something, but what?

-If the Ellipses occur at the end of a sentence, include the period and add the ellipses at the end.
e.g. That's what I was going to do. . . .

-With exclamation points and question marks:
"It was going to get me . . . !"
"He didn't . . . ?"

Remember the space between the last dot and the question/exclamation mark.

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