How to Correctly Use an Ellipsis

The common misuse of ellipses could partly be attributed to the Internet.

An ellipsis consists of three dots with spaces in between and it is used to indicate an omission in a quoted piece of text. While an ellipsis can be a useful tool in your writing, it is often misused. Emails, Facebook statuses and Twitter updates are often full of ellipses. The correct ways to use an ellipse in informal writing is open to interpretation, but when writing formally, there are rules for how to use an ellipsis.

Instructions

1. Use a space before and after the ellipsis.

2. Add a period at the end of an ellipsis if the sentence has ended.

3. Insert a period at the end of a sentence, a space and then your ellipsis when quoting two sentences with an omitted sentence in between them.

4. Insert a four-point ellipsis when omitting one or more paragraphs from a quote and place the ellipsis on a separate line.

Tips & Warnings

• Do not use an ellipsis to indicate missing text in the beginning of a quote.

• Do not break your ellipsis between two lines of text. All three points of the ellipse should fall on the same line.

• Never use an ellipsis to change the meaning of a quote.

References

• Kent Law: Ellipses
• Grammar Girl; "Ellipsis"; Mignon Fogerty; June 2010