Typesetting Tip #6: The Ellipsis

The ellipsis is is used to indicate deleted or missing text. It is not to be confused with 3 periods.

  1. (…) the ellipsis (…)

Basic Rules

The ellipsis should be set using the HTML entity (…) and not substituted with three periods. If the ellipsis comes at the end of a sentence, it should be followed by the appropriate punctuation (….),(…,),(…?)and (…!).

The ellipsis (the 3 period version) is often used in email or chat to indicate that more text is to come. While useful and most often understood, this usage may not be appropriate in other applications.

posted by John Dilworth on Thursday, Oct 26, 2006
tagged with typography