Thar Shaddin

I can't remember ever using this forum's poll system for anything.

My question is this. Should an ellipsis ( three periods like "..." used to "indicate an intentional omission of a word or a phrase from the original text" and "indicate a pause in speech, an unfinished thought or, at the end of a sentence, a trailing off into silence" ) have spaces in between the periods?

Is it: . . .

Or is it: ...

The wikipedia page on it says:

"The Modern Language Association (MLA) however, used to indicate that an ellipsis must include spaces before and after each dot in all uses."

However

"According to Robert Bringhurst's Elements of Typographic Style, the details of typesetting ellipses depend on the character and size of the font being set and the typographer's preference. Bringhurst writes that a full space between each dot is 'another Victorian eccentricity. In most contexts, the Chicago ellipsis is much too wide'" (he is referring to the Chicago Manual of Style)

Also

"Bringhurst suggests that normally an ellipsis should be spaced fore-and-aft to separate it from the text, but when it combines with other punctuation, the leading space disappears and the other punctuation follows. He provides the following examples:
i … j k…. l…, l l, … l m…? n…..!"

Notice that … isn't me typing three periods. It's a unicode symbol. You can copy paste it as one character. Also notice that there're no spaces between the dots. You can see the difference between
... and …

Do ellipses need spaces between each period?

My vote is yes because I think the spaces between the periods better represent the look of the unicode character. I like the aesthetic, and it also seems to be the closest to what I see in formally published work. Ever since I learned the MLA style back in junior high or whenever it was, I started paying attention to how ellipses look, and the no-space method just started to look unpolished to me. It sticks out to me the same way improper apostrophe execution or word usage errors do. Whatever the warring manuals of style dictate currently, I'm still a fan of the classic spaces method.

I voted yes. I have to use MLA format of writing in college, as well as I did briefly in HS. It looks tackier the other way, ya know. . .

Or does it...?

Yeah yeah, it does. =)

My vote is no because it is less efficient and introduces a greater probability one will erroneously type too many spaces or not enough spaces between the periods. I have a bad enough time with frickin' "the" turning into "teh"... To waste the time it takes to type ". . ." and then have to go back and hit backspace to correct any extra spaces is not a good use of my already short time.

Also, think about it in the capacity of space on a (printed) page and attention grabbing. One period on its own is fairly incongruous, nearly indiscernible. If removed from a stack of periods- "..."- then one might lose them on the page altogether.

That and I'm pretty damn lazy and don't give a damn about being "technically" correct...

I say no as well. Though it's more aesthetically pleasing (which I agree with), there is the thought about what they do on a printed page. When you reach the end of the space given for a sentence while typing in Word, Notepad, your poison of choice, there will be the occasional time when you type ". . .", and only 1 or 2 of the periods move down to the next line. It may not happen right at the time, but as a writer, going back and editing, adding lines, sentences and words will change the look of your writing. While I suppose proper editing will catch this, how do you fix it without adding or subtracting another word, which can change the entire context of a sentence or paragraph.

This is the reason I use "...".

Who would have guessed that I, of all people, would weigh in on this subject...

I use spaces, so there is my vote. However, I don't know if ellipses should have spaces in them, that's just how I like them to look. I got used to it after having been corrected in high school, so now that's the norm for me.

I don't use the spaces, because it actually looks better to me without. "..." looks cleaner and more efficient than ". . ." to me. I'm not sure why. Maybe because I'm used to writing software that automatically defaults to the former.

However, I don't have a strong preference. It doesn't really flag in my mind if people do the other. I have huge grammatical and punctuation beefs, but this is not one of them.

I think of it as similar to font choice on paper vs online. Sans-serif is better for the internet as it's easier to read on the monitor, but on paper it's easier with serifs. Same here: "..." is easier to read on the computer, whereas with paper it is clearer when ". . ." is used.

Spaces in ellipses are stupid and ugly except in rare circumstances (such as unusual fonts or extremely dense text) where it improves readability.

I think most "proper English" rules are pretty outdated now. Does anybody go out of their way not to split infinitives or end sentences with presuppositions? Of course not, because it would make things more complicated and harder to read for no good reason. I strongly prefer "...", which is easier to both type and read.

One must never end a sentence with a presupposition.

"You homo, typeset your ellipses properly," is preferred to "Typeset your ellipses properly, you homo."

Hahahhahaha!

My English teacher has always taught us that the point of proper grammar and punctuation is for the reader to read and understand better. Because ". . ." looks stupid and is more difficult to read and understand in most circumstances, I think it's crap, and I think I'm going to stab the next person I see physically typing it that way.

I do declare, unless I've misread my Darwin, I'm pretty sure that's how evolution works. If more people are of a militant mindset, perhaps in fifty or a hundred years, the spaces will never be seen again. Didn't Lewis Carroll die from stab wounds after he wrote the on-its-way-out form of "to-day" in his books?

You've misread your Darwin.

Damn, he must have been using ellipses that were hard to read.