Most of the time, just use three dots (with spaces in between the dots) to
signal stuff you've left out of quotations or empty spaces you want to mark.
If you want to know more, here are the rules (as I understand them . . .
.]
1. Here are four sentences. (The "127" refers to a page number in an in-text
documentation format.) What's the difference in meaning? (Look at the
spaces between
the dots):
- According to Jones, "Thompson was a big eater" (127).
- According to Jones, "Thompson was a big eater . . ." (127).
- According to Jones, Jack Thompson was "a big eater" (127).
- According to Jones, "Thompson was a big eater. . . ."
Here, sentence (a) suggests that the sentence ends after "eater."
Sentence (b) suggests that the sentence continues after "eater." (Maybe the
original
sentence reads, "Everyone knew Thompson was a big eater, a healthy fellow
who liked
his chicken wings."]
Sentence (c) contains some kind of fragment cut from a longer sentence.
(Since it's
obvious the the quoted piece is some kind of fragment, you don't need to
use ellipses to
signal that something is missing.)
In sentence (d), you signal that your quotation continues after "eater" even
though
"Thompson was a big eater" looks like a complete sentence. (The original
may have
been something like "Thompson was a big eater, a big Big eater." If you cut
off the last
part of that sentence, you have to use a fourth dot snugged right up against
the word
"eater" to signal the final period of the sentence. After that, you use three
dots to signal
missing information.)
2. What's the difference between these two sentences:
- Bobs says, "Big woozers wuzzled . . . [and] woozled, too."
- Bobs says, "Big woozers wuzzled. . . . [and] woozled, too."
Sentence (a) suggests that something was taken out between "wuzzled" and
"woozled."
That something could have been extra words in the sentence--for instance,
the whole
sentence could have read: "Big woozers wuzzled happily, sympathetically,
and strongly
while all the time they woozled, too.") Or there might have been extra
words at the end
of one sentence and the beginning of the next sentence. (The whole
passage could have
been two sentences: "Big woozers wuzzled happily. Not surprisingly, they
woozled, too.")
Sentence (b) suggests that the first sentence ends after "wuzzled" and one or
more
sentences were removed before the final "They woozled, too." [The
sentences in the
original might have read, "Big woozers wuzzled. While they wuzzled, they
did they did
the obvious. They woozled, too.")
3. If you omit a whole line of poetry or a whole paragraph, use a whole line
of
ellipses:
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"`Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door--
Only this and nothing more."
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