Talk:Ellipsis

Contents

1 How many dots? 2 Grammatical ellipsis 3 Ellipses in quotations 4 Splitting this article 5 Ellipsis (punctuation) in other languages 6 The Ellipsis as a Character in Fonts

How many dots?

For example, in the sentence "The man that I saw in the park was tall", the word "that" which introduces the relative phrase can be elided, leaving "The man I saw...", which has the same meaning.

I have removed this from the article. The word "that" in this context is not "a word required by strict grammatical rules", so the given definition of an ellipsis doesn't apply to it. And besides, it doesn't sound like rhetoric or poetry! Can anyone come up with a better example? I know nothing of these arty matters. ;) -- Oliver P. 01:34 May 7, 2003 (UTC)

I've stuck in the Pepys example, which is the best example I know of. Any chance of somebody providing a "translation" of the Burns example? I'm afraid I don't understand it (which probably makes me a terrible person or something). --Camembert

A very good example, Mr. Camembert! I haven't a clue about the meaning of the Burns quote, but I've found a source in which it is written slightly differently. So I'm going to edit it a bit, and maybe format the lines in a more poemy way, and hope you don't notice that I'm also rearranging your sentences to remove the ghastly possessives-without-apostrophe-ses... ;) -- Oliver P. 02:37 May 7, 2003 (UTC)

"Ghastly"?! I'll have you know, sir, that my family has used that formation for three hundred years, and... oh alright, I'll let you off ;) --Camembert

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On a slightly different thread, I always thought one used 4 dots if it trails at the end of a sentence. See: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/cmosfaq/cmosfaq.html Sam.

Hmm. Never seen that before... The Chicago Manual of Style, eh? Is this just what the University of Chicago does? -- Oliver P. 02:37 May 7, 2003 (UTC)

That's what I learned, too. Three dots within a sentence, four dots to end the sentence, three dots after a period and space along with lack of capitalization for the beginning of a sentence. Not sure how widespread it is. - Gwalla 04:02, May 28, 2004 (UTC)

Grammatical ellipsis

Is the "In grammar of languages" part any different from the "figure of speech" part? If not, can it be removed? -- Oliver P. 03:21 May 7, 2003 (UTC)

Actually I wasn't sure mention in figure of speech part. I just rememebered I learned ellipsis in my grammar class so I added a mention about it from my memory. I am glad if you or anyone can integrate them into one. -- Taku 03:48 May 7, 2003 (UTC)

I might leave it to someone more expert on these matters. :) -- Oliver P. 03:57 May 7, 2003 (UTC)

Moved this

In grammar of languages, ellipsis is some way to explain some kind of omission. e.g.

"Wikipedia is a great encyclopedia ever created"

can be seen as a short way to say

"Wikipedia is a great encyclopedia that is ever created"

But this can be explained without ellipsis. "Created" can be regarded as past participle, so it modifies a noun encylopedia just like adjective does.

to here. It seems to me the first example is just an incomplete sentence rather than really being an ellipsis, and the rest of it is just a debate. I also moved this here

Some style guide says in quotes you need to surround ellipses with brackets to show it was modified from the original.

, because I think it confuses ellipsis points (used to indicate omissions) with interpolated material (which is inserted between brackets). Not to say that SOME style manual doesn't suggest it, but it would be good to know which one. And, for what it's worth, the Chicago Manual of Style says use dots/ellipsis points/suspension points, never asterisks/stars. -- Someone else 04:53 May 7, 2003 (UTC)

I was wondering about the asterisks, thinking that perhaps some other languages use those? But I've certainly never seen it in any form of English I've seen. -- John Owens 05:03 May 7, 2003 (UTC)

Someone must do it or we wouldn't be warned against it<G>. Like you, I wonder who it is! -- Someone else 05:19 May 7, 2003 (UTC)

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For those who are unfamiliar with 18th century Scots dialect, maybe this will help - Burns is saying "Is there (a)n honest(man among us) who hangs his head because of his Poverty". The poet uses ellipsis to personalise and highlight "honest Poverty". A good example.

Now, for those who are unfamiliar with 21st century English - can I suggest that the encyclopedia example should be:

"Wikipedia is the greatest encyclopedia ever created"

can be seen as a short way to say

"Wikipedia is the greatest encyclopedia that has ever "been" created"

Tiles 07:40 May 7, 2003 (UTC)

Again, though, "Wikipedia is the greatest encyclopedia ever created" is a perfectly complete sentence on its own. "Created" is a past participle modified by the adverb "ever" and modifying in turn the noun "encyclopedia". "Encyclopedias ever created" specified a set of encyclopedias, and the sentence says that Wikipedia is the greatest of these. I've removed the example from the article:

“Wikipedia is the greatest encyclopedia ever created”

which can be interpreted as a short way to say: “Wikipedia is the greatest encyclopedia that has ever been created”

If someone wants to mangle this into a better example, go for it, but there are already a few there.

BTW, I believe the asterisks are generally used between paragraphs in block-quotes. They can also be used to denote section breaks, often in fiction (eg, Through the Looking Glass), though this may not be an actual "ellipsis". --Spikey 23:24, Jan 13, 2005 (UTC)

Ellipses in quotations

"...an ellipsis is used enclosed in brackets ([ ]) or, more often, slashes (//) if one wishes to omit a part of an original quotation."

Is there any basis for the "more often" claim here? In my experience omissions/deletions are marked with a bare ellipsis or, more often, with an ellipsis enclosed in brackets in publications. I have seen the occasional use of slashes in informal text like email or some manuscripts, but in those cases it seems to have been for authoring convenience, not as a typographical habit (like the use of slashes to denote italics). Also the entry on brackets includes its usage in quotes, something the entry on slashes does not.

I'm not sure where the author got this statement about enclosing an ellipsis in brackets. I always understood that a simple ellipsis, without brackets, is used to indicate an omission. That is what the Chicago Manual of Style (which is the style manual referenced in the same paragraph) recommends. In fact, Chicago does not even mention brackets in that context. (I looked this up in both the 1993 14th edition and the 1969 12th edition—14th: 10.47–10.63; 12th: 10.31–10.40) Brackets are used when replacing original text with one's own words. Perhaps the brackets/slashes usage is British practice? Mateo SA | talk 04:21, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)

Splitting this article

I would suggest splitting this article into ellipsis (punctuation) and ellipsis (rhetoric) with ellipsis being a disambiguation pages. This article is already big enough that one has to scroll few screens of text to find out that it is also about the rhetorical figure of speech. Also, maybe more importantly, it causes problems with interwiki links. For example in Polish ellipsis as punctuation is wielokropek but ellipsis as the rhetorical figure is elipsa which also means ellipse, the flattened circle. Rafał Pocztarski 05:05, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Ellipsis (punctuation) in other languages

This article will probably need sections for differences in other languages like those in the quotation mark article. The differences are mostly in spaces and brackets. I will split this article into sections and write about Polish rules. Rafał Pocztarski 05:12, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The Ellipsis as a Character in Fonts

I've done a fair bit of digging and have been unable to find answers to these questions:

1. Most computer fonts these days seem to include the ellipsis as a single character that displays as three dots. The dots are often smaller and more crowded than the dots that would be displayed if one typed 3 periods. Is the ellipsis - a single character within a computer font - included in computer fonts as a work-around that prevents an ellipsis from being mangled by a line break?

2. Was the ellipsis a "cast-in-metal" character during the Linotype days, or did the Linotype operator make each one up as needed, and according to the applicable style book? Some style books call for the ellipsis to be spaced more widely than single en spaces, much different than the spacing of the character found in typical computer fonts, which are sometimes narrower than el spaces.

3. How does one reconcile the 3-dot and 4-dot ellipses with the fact that (at least among the fonts I looked at) computer fonts only supply a 3-dot ellipsis character? Setting a three-dot-ellipsis character - preceded or followed by a standard period - looks downright ugly.

It might be worth mentioning the use of ellipses in writing for broadcast news. I once read news on the radio, back in the Teletype days, from copy provided by a special broadcast news service. It was not uncommon for ellipses to be used as the end-punctuation for every sentence, except the last one, in a paragraph. Since spoken-word English is basically punctuated by inflection and pauses, the ellipses - used in this way - made the reading of news copy much easier than standard punctuation might.

I think it would be useful (or at least interesting) information for the article. Thanks for any wisdom or history anyone can provide.