Word formats my ellipses in a strange way...

ZMShah · Dec 21, 2010

Whenever I write "..." MS Word shrinks them down into a very-small tightly-enclosed "..."

I'm sure many of you have noticed this. So my question is, in terms of manuscript format, is that okay? If it's not, anyone know a simple way to make MS Word turn them back to the normal spacing and size all at once?

pinkrobot · Dec 21, 2010

As soon as Word shrinks them down, hit backspace. It should undo the auto-formatting.

Darkwing · Dec 21, 2010

I always put one space between each period in the ellipses. It's the proper formatting (as far as I know) and it stops Word from wreaking havoc with its little substitutions.
Keeping one space between each allows your eventual publisher to typeset it properly. I've heard this is also the reason writers should just use "--" for the em dash instead of allowing Word to substitute a "real" em dash.

Just one of the many reasons the English department at my university hates Word. >.< The little condensed dots also happen to be wrong for MLA format.

ZMShah · Dec 21, 2010

ahhhh, so I guess I have to find each one and space them right? Or I can do a "replace all," but that always scares me. . .

AnnieColleen · Dec 21, 2010

Find your autocorrect options and turn that one off. (Look under both AutoFormat and AutoFormat As You Type in the options tab.) That should stop it for any future ones. You will need to do find and replace (or I suppose find and fix manually) for the ones already present.

blacbird · Dec 21, 2010

AnnieColleen said:
Find your autocorrect options and turn that one off.

. . . along with all the other default sonsabitches.

Xelebes · Dec 21, 2010

Darkwing said:
I always put one space between each period in the ellipses. It's the proper formatting (as far as I know) and it stops Word from wreaking havoc with its little substitutions.
Keeping one space between each allows your eventual publisher to typeset it properly. I've heard this is also the reason writers should just use "--" for the em dash instead of allowing Word to substitute a "real" em dash.

Just one of the many reasons the English department at my university hates Word. >.< The little condensed dots also happen to be wrong for MLA format.

So I should stop manually typing in the em dash ― ?

dpaterso · Dec 21, 2010

I still use MS Word 2000, the autocorrect options are found under Tools > Autocorrect

The list of autocorrect substitutions displays in the Autocorrect tab.

Select the special ellipsis (…) item and then hit the Delete button to get rid of this substitution.

While you're in Tools > Autocorrect, you can also delete the em-dash entry so it doesn't change the regular 2-hyphen em-dash (--) to the special em-dash (—) character.

You can use Edit > Find and Replace (or Ctrl-H) to replace all occurrences of the … character with ... (3 periods) or just search for the … character manually and go through your document.

I'm not a fan of spacing periods out when typing ellipses, because they can be split up and drop down into the next line if you're near the right margin. I type 3 periods (without spaces) for pauses... and if it's the end of the sentence, 4 periods.... As long as I'm consistent, editors/typesetters shouldn't have any problems changing this to their preferred style.

-Derek

PeterL · Dec 22, 2010

Rather than just turning that item off in Autocorrect, you should turn off Autocorrect. There are some changes that it may make, but it is safer to do make those changes yourself, so that you won't lose fformatting.

maestrowork · Dec 22, 2010

Just turn off autocorrect. You really don't need fancy formatting, especially if you're going to eventual submit it electronically in email. Plain text is all you need. No special characters.

Susan Coffin · Dec 22, 2010

ZMShah said:
Whenever I write "..." MS Word shrinks them down into a very-small tightly-enclosed "..."

I'm sure many of you have noticed this. So my question is, in terms of manuscript format, is that okay? If it's not, anyone know a simple way to make MS Word turn them back to the normal spacing and size all at once?

I know! It's frustrating! Backspace does the trick.

I don't use them often, but I did leave mine that way. They are a little longer than a dash, so the might be distinguishable as m-dashes.

Susan Coffin · Dec 22, 2010

I didn't know about the auto-correct. Great tip!

dpaterso · Dec 22, 2010

I didn't switch off Autocorrect because there are many words in the list that I'm always typo'ing as my demented fingers move too fast for my frazzled brain. I just deleted the 2 items that caused me problems instead.

-Derek

scarletpeaches · Dec 22, 2010

One of my publishers specifies that their house style is to use word-generated ellipses.

Of course I should add, anyone who publishes me is clearly out of their gourd anyway.

Word formats my ellipses in a strange way...

ZMShah

Techno-Fantasizer

pinkrobot

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Darkwing

ZMShah

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AnnieColleen

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Xelebes

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maestrowork

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Susan Coffin

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Susan Coffin

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