[Sca-cooks] OT: Ellipsis...

[sjk3 at cornell.edu]

> ...but that series of dots preceding or following a truncated quote
> or a somewhat unfinished sentence or incomplete thought is a
> legitimate punctuation mark and actually has a name:
> Ellipsis
> and it is quite specifically only three dots...
> ...not some unspecified number.

    True, not it's not ever an unspecified number of dots, but it isn't
always three.  "When the last part of a quoted sentence is omitted and
what remains is still gramatically complete, four dots -- a period
followed by three ellipsis dots -- are used to indicate the omission."
(Chicago Manual of Style, 14th edition, section 10.55).  Well, ok, it is
still a three-dot ellipsis and a period, but it *looks* like four dots!
What really gets me is people who write in perfectly complete sentences,
but connect them with ellipses instead of periods.  Why?

    Were ellipses ever used in period?

Sandra (what, me pedantic?)