Re: OT: Ellipsis Points

["Patricia M. Godfrey" PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx]

Jordan wrote:
≪ whether there exists some internationally recognized symbol to
indicate this, other than ellipsis ? I thought I might have seen
something like that in the past, but I don't recall for sure. It would
*not* have been a standard punctuation mark, though, more like a symbol
-- if I'm remembering something that actually exists.≫

Depends on what you mean by "ellipsis." In most fonts (and computerized
typesetting systems, including Xy) there is a separate character for the
conventional three points of a standard ellipsis (in Xy it's 258; I can
get the ways of producing it in WP and Word if you want). AFAIK (but I
could be wrong) it's pretty much standard in all languages using the
roman alphabet. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be in the ISO Latin 1
lists that I have, but they're not up to date. But I just tried to find
it in the "Insert->common symbols" menu of Thunderbird, and it's not
there. I see that George Scithers is opposed to using this character.
Some publishers, however, want you to use it. If you don't know what
your prospective publisher is going to want, consider which will be
easier to do a CI on in whatever word processor is being used.
As far as margins and line spacing go, I agree with George. But again,
some publishers DO want you to put extra space between paragraphs (and
not indent the first line of paragraphs). See also /The Columbia Guide
to Online Style/ (Columbia University Press, 1998; at one point they
were maintaining it online at www.columbia.edu/cu/cup/cgos/; if it's not
there now, maybe Leslie knows what's become of it?)
I also agree with George that there is nothing "tiresome or grating"
about this. It's an absolutely established convention; people learn it
(well, we used to; I couldn't say what goes on in so-called schools
nowadays) in high school.

≪4. I read that there should be 3 periods and 3 spaces. If the
deleted words are after a full sentence, is the first period right after
the last letter ? Are there still only 3 periods including that one ?≫
What George says is the basic procedure, followed in a lot of publishing
houses. But there is a more complex and precise one, detailed in /The
Chicago Manual of Style,/ 14th ed. The important thing about this more
precise style is that, in a case like this, where the originals are
unpublished primary sources, only the author can impose this style,
because only he or she knows the precise state of the original and what
has been omitted. If the author isn't the kind of compulsive nit-picker
who can do this, better to just stick to the three-dot ellipsis and add
an extra dot after it if it ends a sentence. (Note that if you use the
real ellipsis character, you don't have to worry about spaces: the
spacing is part of the character. You may worry about spaces before or
after. I'm coming to that.)
Now here is what /Chicago/ says: after first noting that just using the
three-dot ellipsis (that ed. hadn't yet discovered the existence of the
single character, so I am modifying its instructions to specify that)
all the time, whether it comes in the middle, at the end, or at the
beginning of a sentence, is widely done, it describes another method.

a) Use the 3-dot symbol alone if the omission comes in the middle of a
sentence.
b) If other punctuation precedes or follows the omission, include it.
(Note that this contradicts what Harriet says. Different publishers,
different styles. But /Chicago/ is widely used in scholarly houses and
even some not-so-scholarly ones.) And George's point, that it depends on
whether the punctuation helps to clarify what is omitted, is very relevant.

c) If the omission comes at the end of a sentence, but what is quoted is
grammatically a complete sentence, end the sentence with a period, then
insert the three-dot symbol. (Obviously, you have to know what is and is
not a grammatically complete sentence.) If the sentence ends with a
quesstion mark or exclamation point, /Chicago/ says to insert the
question mark or screamer, then the three-dot.

In both these cases, I would consider it more logical to put the
three-dot before the other punctuation, since in fact the omission comes
_before_ the end of the sentence.

d) If what remains is not a grammatically complete sentence, just usee
the three-dot.

e) An omission at the beginning of a quotation is not usually indicated.

f) If the beginning of a sentence is omitted after a portion or the
whole of a previous sentence has been quoted, end the previous sentence
with its period (or question mark or screamer), then use the three-dot,
then whatever you're going to quote of the next sentence.

Here, I would put a space after the sentence-ending punctuation and
before the three-dot.

g) If a whole paragraph is omitted, put the three-dot at the end of the
previous paragraph. If that par ends with a grammatically complete
sentence (even if it's not the whole sentence in the original or not the
last sentence in the original), put its closing punctuation (and I'd put
a space) before the three-dot.

h) "If a paragraph in the quotation, other than the first paragraph,
begins with a sentence that does not open the paragraph in the original,
the sentence should be preceded by [the three-dot] following the usual
paragraph indentation."

i) Obviously incomplete phrases enclosed fore and aft with quotation
marks do not require the three-dot at beginning or end.

Patricia M. Godfrey