Ellipsis

[third man girl]

Today's challenge:

Can anyone help with punctuation?

When using ellipsis marks '...' do the three little dots come immediately after the word, or is there a space?

e.g. "She paused... then continued."
or "She paused ... then continued."

And is British style different from American? The books I read appear to differ.

Third Man Girl

 

[Ashlea]

MLA style, which is what we use here, (Modern Language Association, I'm sure they have a website) says spaces before, after, and in between. Like this:

first . . . second

But I bet MLA is US only.

 

[Martin]

No, it isn't. I have an MLA - Handbook, in which the rules for writing essays and such can be found.

MLA, it appears, is global.

Cheers, Martin

 

[Ashlea]

I'm actually not surprised that something as annoying as MLA is insidious enough to be international. It was the bane of my college existence.

 

[third man girl]

Originally posted by Ashlea
says spaces before, after, and in between.

'and in between'? The plot thickens . . .

Third Man Girl

Thanks, BTW

 

[Martin]

Ashlea originally posted:

It was the bane of my college existence.

Amen to that!

Cheers, Martin

 

[Sun-SSS]

Elipses

A question I have puzzled over too. I use a lot of elipses -- too many, some might say. I answered the question to my own satisfaction by looking at well-presented text in good books. I can't remember finding any with spaces both before and after the words. As for spaces between the dots, well, that would look really weird. I've never seen that in print. The elipses come straight off the keyboard anyway…

Conventions are only conventions. Writers of style manuals would like to make them hard and fast rules, but what would they know? If they even thought they could write, surely they wouldn't be wasting their time writing rules.

I favour using elipses with the space at either end, according to context. Sometimes a passage invites you to leave it hanging, as in final sentence, first paragraph of this. This applies especially when writing dialogue, when you want to indicate that the speaker trails off, as people so often do. Or when a person's thoughts trail off. In those cases, a space between words and punctuation would look silly. At other times, such as when the speaker pauses, trying to think what to say next, I favour putting the space before the punctuation, thus, the speaker having been asked to explain why he was late -- "Well …I had to give a friend of Wendy's a ride home. It was a long way," McCarthy (etc.)

 

[Martin]

I've grown to loathe the ellipsis ... people typing like this ... disregarding proper punctuation ... and worst of all is when people feel the need to end their sentences with an endless string of exclamationmarks ... followed closely by the ever-present 'one'!!!!!11

Ugh!

Cheers

 

[Wabbit]

Really???? Hmmm....

PS: I did write a long and sensible reply but the bastard forum decided to tell me that it doesn't exist and I lost it. I'm not typing that again, so there

 

[Ou Be Low hoo]

Is this really a serious question?!?!? If any of you have been reading books by authors other than Dan Brown and Clive Cussler, you should be able to realise that in literature there are no rules...

 

[dele]

Is this really a serious question?!?!? If any of you have been reading books by authors other than Dan Brown and Clive Cussler, you should be able to realise that in literature there are no rules...

Well I can recognise a personal jab when I see one. Yes, I do like reading Clive Cussler. I've never said he's sophisticated literature, that he'll be read by generations to come, or that he deserves to be put on a pedestal. If you had ever bothered to ask me why I like him, I'd gladly tell you. I think the answer would astonish you. I wish you could open your mind just enough to allow other people's opinions to not taint your opinion of them. I take back what I said earlier about there being hope for you yet.

Rant over. Hopefully.

Back on topic... MLA is evil! And it seems natural to me that there shouldn't be a space. But who knows, grammar is rather confusing and mostly unnatural.

 

[Billy Oblivion]

Well I can recognise a personal jab when I see one. I wish you could open your mind just enough to allow other people's opinions to not taint your opinion of them. I take back what I said earlier about there being hope for you yet.

Rant over. Hopefully.

Hey, don't let Obby Dooby upset you. The whole point of a message board is to let people express opinions. If someone has a different opinion to you, or tells you your opinions are crap, then that should be fine. It's a basis for discussion not a starting point for feud. Learn from what's informative, laugh at what's funny and ignore thooe with the IQ of a pencil.

And now, back to the thread...

 

[Freya]

... followed closely by the ever-present 'one'!!!!!11

!!!!!!!!111!!!!1!!!!1!!1eleven!!!11!!!!111!!!

Heh. Cracks me up every time.

 

[novella]

Is this really a serious question?!?!? If any of you have been reading books by authors other than Dan Brown and Clive Cussler, you should be able to realise that in literature there are no rules...

It's great to have an asshole to kick around. Thanks oob.

There are rules for every bit of text that goes into print.

There are rules about ellipses. In the US, Chicago (that's The Chicago Manual of Style) is the generally accepted style guide for all trade book publishers. Many newspapers, however, follow the NYT style book, and other publications have their own exceptions.

An ellipsis has spaces before and within, i.e., between each full point. Also, it has four (4) full points when it represents the end of a sentence, and in that case the full point representing the end of the sentence is placed accordingly.

 

[Ou Be Low hoo]

I find it mildly amusing that so many of the people who post on this forum are outraged if I state my opinion, yet are happy to add nothing to the thread other than a 'flame-broiled' remark directed at me! What's the word I'm looking for...hippo?...hippo?...hippo?...HIPPOCRITE? - some sort of river animal, right?

I stand by my opinion. Literature, being a form of art, is governed by no rules.

 

[Cathy C]

Literature, being a form of art, is governed by no rules.

Hmm. Yes, and no, Ou Be. While some publishers ARE, in fact, willing to allow an author his/her head in grammar if the work is such that standard rules can't apply and retain the novelty of the work, most American publishers do hold authors to grammatical standards set out in a number of volumes.

Since you're in Scotland, third man girl, I don't know if those of us in America can help much. But novella is right that most major New York publishers use the Chicago Manual of Style. It's been stated in the volume that the primary difference between American and British styles of punctuation is that the "American system governs the placement of punctuation in fiction. The British style is strongly advocated by some American language experts when using specialized material. In linguistic and philosophical works, specialized terms are regularly puntuated by British way. But in defense of nearly a century and a half of the American style, it may be said that it seems to have been working fairly well and has not resulted in serious miscommunication."

Here's the blurb for ellipses (14th ed., at 10.39).

"Authors and editors are not always consistent in the way they use ellipses and dashes in interrupted speech, but an attempt should be made to establish a distinction. Ellipsis points suggest faltering or fragmented speech accompanied by confusion, insecurity, distress or uncertainty, and they should be reserved for that purpose. The dash, on the other hand, suggests some decisiveness and should be reserved for interruptions by action or another speaker, abrupt changes in thought, or impatient fractures of grammar.

For example: "I . . . I . . . that is, we . . . yes, we have made an awful blunder!"

"The binoculars . . . where in the devil did I put them?"

"The ship . . . oh my God! . . . it's sinking!" cried Henrietta.

The ellipsis points are printed on the line like periods, not above it like multiplication dots in mathematics. They are separated from each other and from the text and any contiguous punctuation by 3-to-em spaces (or a space between each point). If other punctuation, such as a period, exclamation point or a question mark, occurs at the end of the fragment, it is retained before the three points, such as:

"But . . . how? . . . ," said Tom."

Hope that helps!

Cathy

 

[Sun-SSS]

Cathy

So some publishers are willing to give writers their heads… Well, hey, that's big of them.

It might come as news to them that some writers are writing for readers, not for anal-retentive publishing executives, most of whom have never read a decent book in their lives. No wonder literature is in such a doldrums. Bookstore shelves full of same-old same-old, empty things all targeting the lowest common denominator. No James Joyce or Jack Kerouak would find a place in the world of books as it exists today.

And what difference does it make which country you're reading in? Even here in the third world we're reading the same language, for Chrissake.

 

[AaronShaw]

New here but if I may add to the wonderful controversy (start of on a good note eh?):

Conventions are only conventions. Writers of style manuals would like to make them hard and fast rules, but what would they know? If they even thought they could write, surely they wouldn't be wasting their time writing rules.

Indeed so very true.

disregarding proper punctuation

But who knows, grammar is rather confusing and mostly unnatural.

Indeed quite unnatural. I must qualify what I am about to say by mentioning that I am an aspiring linguist so many of my thoughts are quite biased (and in a community such as this may not be readily welcomed).

I see a purpose in writing conventions. It is, after all, a means of maximizing effective communication. To that end grammar as *prescribed* by grammarians has purpose. Most of grammar though I completely disagree with. Our grammar (prescriptive grammar that is) was "written" and controlled in the early years by people obsessed with the supposed "superiority" of Latin and Helenistic languages. Therefore our grammar is very very biased towards trends that occur in latin. This, of course, is quite obviously flawed due to several facts:

1) Many speakers and writers of English find the "rules" to be unintuitive (how could they be? English isn't latin...)
2) English is predominantly a Germanic language. Sure we borrowed a few words and idiomatic expressions from French etc. but the inherent structure of our language is related much more closely to modern German and (now dead) Gothic. How much sense does it make to base a set of "rules" for English on Latin then?

I could go on but I feel I should end my rant before it goes too far

 

[Cathy C]

It might come as news to them that some writers are writing for readers, not for anal-retentive publishing executives

Well, yes and no. Readers read with a basic understanding of grammar and punctuation (at least those who attended any formalized schooling.) They know that a period signifies a stop, and a comma is a "breathing break". Admittedly, many of the other rules are fluid. But it's very distracting to the reader to have a completely different form than they're used to. It's one thing for it to be intentional; another thing entirely for it to be sloppy. Intentional can be thought provoking. Sloppy is just annoying. Take a look at the flack surrounding Anne Rice's latest offering.

But it is useful from a business standpoint to standardize punctuation and grammar, if only for the fact that copy editors can find employment from publishing house to publishing house!

Of course, there are always breakout writers (think ee cummings) who bend the rules into little salted pretzels -- but stand out because they broke existing rules.

That said, I believe ellipses were being discussed. Did your questions get answered, third man girl?

 

[Freya]

Being that she asked about a year ago, she's probably come to her own conclusions regarding this one... (sorry, should that be . . . ) !11!!!!1!!!!!eleven!!!