Ellipsis
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The print spacing of the ellipsis in this sentence is confusing me. I would know what to do if there were four dots or no capital letter on the word "He". The print copy: I began to count. One, two, three...He made it seven seconds before the yips and cries began.
Hi Cheryl,
Thanks for the question. These can be a little tricky. Print spacing has to be ignored in a situation like this. It's important to look at the surrounding text to get an idea of what is actually being conveyed. Is the ellipsis showing an incomplete sentence or not? You are on the right track. The capitalized word He tells us a new sentence is beginning, but we need to look just a little further. The following sentence tells us he counted to seven. That is where we find the answer. Since we know that he counted to seven, it's obvious that (One, two, three) is incomplete, so we would treat this as an incomplete sentence brailling the ellipsis first and the period last.
SaralynThanks so much for the info. Wow, I never thought to think about the seven seconds. Of course the count would have continued until the yips began. So let me summarize what I think you have said. I would ignore the fact that there are only three dots in print format and would put the ellipsis with a period (15.3a). Then start the new sentence. This is what I had in my mind to do, but I wasn't sure about going against the print.
CherylOh my! So sorry. I didn't see that you only had three dots in print. No, do not add something that is not in print.
That makes the answer even easier. The ellipsis is showing the omission of words.
See EBAE Rule I.7, "The ellipsis should be spaced ... as a word."
In your example there should be a blank space before and after the ellipsis.Thanks so much.
cheryl
You're welcome.
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