On or near 3/14/01 7:58 AM, Paul Berkowitz at [EMAIL PROTECTED] observed:
> On 3/14/01 6:01 AM, "Christian M. M. Brady" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> On 3/14/01 6:34 AM, "Tim Mountford" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>>> Stardate 10/3/01 1:03 am, Allen Watson's log:
>>>> Try it without leaving a space after the last dot...like this! I think,
>>>> stylistically, that is correct.
>>>
>>> As someone with a modicum of typographic training (should I brag and say an
>>> honours degree?) an ellipsis SHOULD be both preceded and followed by a
>>> space. However usage varies according to style and it is common for ellipses
>>> to be merely followed by a space. Trouble is the MS Auto-correct will
>>> automatically capitalize when it sees a period followed by a space.
>>
>> Tim,
>>
>> So if you have an ellipsis at the end of the sentence should it have a
>> period as well? "She kept going on, and on, and on ...."
>>
> It seems to me than an ellipsis at the "end" implies that the end has been
> abrogated - that we don't know what the end might have been, that there is
> no end. I've never seen a period afterwards �
The whole question of ellipses is very confusing. It is made more so by the
fact that the manuals, including "The Chicago Manual of Style," discuss the
matter in terms of an ellipsis being separate <period> characters "separated
from each other and from the text and any contiguous punctuation by 3-to-em
spaces." On the Mac, however, we have a special ellipsis character, which is
a single character with built-in internal spacing. Therefore, nearly all the
discussion of the topic in the Chicago manual has to be adapted to the Mac's
single character.
My contention is that if you are using periods, follow the manual. However,
3-to-em spaces, to my knowledge, do not exist on the Mac or any computer. We
have the em space (originally, the width of a capital M), the en space ("N")
which is half the em, and then the expandable "normal" space, often called a
spaceband in typesetting for reasons dating back to hot metal typography
(which prevailed until the 70's and 80's). So we cannot follow the rules of
the manuals literally; we're playing with somewhat different components and,
so far as I know, the rules are not well-defined. My own preference in my
writing, which achieves a result that seems visually pleasing, is to use
<no> space before or after the ellipsis character, as I suggested on March
10 in this thread. The one rule we can follow is: Within your own document,
be consistent.
Within the rules governing the usage of separate periods for ellipses, there
would be no period before or after the ellipsis following an incomplete
sentence, but if what remains after the omission is "still grammatically
complete, four dots--a period followed by three ellipsis dots--are used to
indicate the omission." That is a quote from page 373 of my copy of the
Chicago manual. It continues: "When what remains is not grammatically
complete, the period is omitted...." I give that quote as an illustration of
the first case!
Where is Robin Williams when you need her? Does anyone own a copy of "The
Mac is not a Typewriter?" Does Robin address the ellipsis question in it?
--
Peace,
Allen Watson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> XNS name: =Allen Watson
A Mac family since 1984 <http://home.earthlink.net/~allenwatson/>
Applescripts for Outlook Express and Entourage:
<http://homepage.mac.com/allenwatson/>
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