Question about using an elipsis.

I believe you should have a space between the words and the elipsis. (eta: space on both sides of the elipsis) That's the way I've always done it, but I've been known to do things wrong.

Okay, I looked in a published novel and it's the way I said. So, "I ... I love you."

That's something decided by your publisher's house style. It's a matter of typography, not punctuation.

Just pick one way and stick to it.

Listen to Medievalist. She knows everything.

(Or at least, a lot more than I.)

Beach Bunny said:

Listen to Medievalist. She knows everything.

(Or at least, a lot more than I.)

Click to expand...

Not true!

But I've worked as a typesetter for a fair number of publishers.

Shadow Dragon said:

"I...I love you."

or

"I... I love you."

Click to expand...

Trivial but I mention it anyway, if you don't insert a space after the ellipsis, MS Word will treat the "joined" words as one word.

Which means, if you join a couple of long words together with a non-breaking ellipse near the right margin, they'll both jump down onto the next line leaving a puzzling gap --
together...forever.

It'll affect your wordcount, too! Imagine you're writing a 100-word article and you submit exactly 100 words...then the editor inserts spaces after the 12 ellipses you used... suddenly there are 112 words! Shock horror rejection!

Extreme example just for fun's sake.

I join the ellipsis onto the preceding word... in the same way a period is joined to the preceding word. I can't have ... orphans floating around all over the place! That affects wordcount too! "I can't have ... orphans" is 5 words not 4!


-Derek

My knowledge of grammar goes right out the window when I write -so aggravating!

I'm using the elipsis as a pause. Is the following from my WIP correct?

"You will punish them to the point where they will never want to recreate their wicked acts again.” I couldn’t help laughing. This guy enjoys drama. My first instinct was to ridicule him, and the whole idea of his statement, but I myself was just … punished.

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I've been told that the accepted formatting for . . . what was the word? Ah, yes, ellipses. Well, apparently you're supposed to type a space between each dot. So, not... but . . . and yes, then a space after the last . . . unless you have sentence that trails off to a . . ..

While on the subject of the ellipsis, I've wondered a few things [most of which answered above as "It's up to you, pretty much"], but I have one other which may be the same, after the ellipsis - capital letter? Or is that more a depends-when-you-use-it kind of thing?

I've seen it done both ways, I'm just curious if there is a right/wrong way with this.

I've seen in, in books, like:

I can't believe you just . . . did that!

With a space after the last word of the first part, before the first word of the next part, and between each dot. Basically, a space everywhere. That's how I've recently started doing it, and I replaced all my '...'s with ' . . . 's.
I didn't check, but that there probably added a whole page of space. And I don't capitalize the next word.
I use ellipses far too often, so I hope I'm at least doing it in a correct way.

Am I the only person on planet earth that doesn't put spaces on their ellipses?

Just seems that the extra space makes things cluttered. Hm...extra space making things cluttered...

Well, unless I learn otherwise, this wouldn't be grounds for an auto rejection for most agents (I don't think) so I'll met my typesetter handle all that.

No, you're not the only person who does it incorrectly. Most people think the same thing until they learn that it's space, dot, space, dot, space, dot, space, word.

Also, it's planet Earth, not planet earth.

See? You learned two things in one thread!