If you asked your high-school English teacher, they would tell you there is only one way to correctly use ellipses: to leave out words or phrases from quotations. But the hard and fast rule is that you can only write an ellipsis like so. Spacing rules differ among style guides, as do rules about other punctuation marks next to the ellipsis. An ellipsis is always only three periods. Can an ellipses ever be two dots? Can you use more than three dots to indicate a longer omission or pause in thoughts? Just like comma rules have changed over time, so, too, has the acceptable use of ellipses.īut some rules still exist. Punctuation marks are an important part of language. The truth is: language has always had formal and informal uses, and language evolves. Staunch grammarians will tell you that this is the only acceptable use for ellipses and that any other uses, like the trailing off of thoughts, are wildly incorrect. This is always true for formal uses of the ellipsis. We use ellipses to indicate omissions of words, phrases, or even whole sentences. The word ellipsis comes from an ancient Greek word that means “to leave out.” An ellipsis is a punctuation mark consisting of three periods in a row. In short, that’s what an ellipsis is or, at least, that’s how we write it. Still, the correct usage of ellipses, whether formal or informal, seems to elude many people, even writers! Like all features of language, the uses have evolved over time. The ellipsis (plural ellipses) originally served very specific functions. When it comes to English grammar, no other form of punctuation has been as thoroughly abused and misused as the ellipsis.
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