Ellipses, also known as ellipsis points (or, if you're talking about one set, an ellipsis), are three equally spaced periods (...) used as punctuation in particular circumstances.
Example #1
Original: "Fatal Attraction is just about the worst dating movie imaginable--a movie almost guaranteed to start sour, unresolvable arguments-- but long lines of people curl around the block waiting to see it."
--Pauline Kael
Quoted and changed: Pauline Kael writes that "Fatal Attraction is just about the worst dating movie imaginable ... but long lines of people curl around the block waiting to see it."
Omission of a sentence or more
If you omit a sentence or more from a quoted passage, and if there remains a complete sentence on either side of the ellipsis, then use a period before the ellipsis (making four dots). Three-dot ellipses cannot function alone as periods or other end-punctuation marks.
Example #2
In Art, Clive Bell writes: "It is the mark of great art that its appeal is universal and eternal. ... The ideas of men go buzz and die like gnats; ... only great art remains stable and unobscure."
The first ellipsis indicates the omission of a sentence between the two quoted. The second ellipsis marks the omission of a part of the sentence punctuated with a semicolon; note that the internal punctuation (the semicolon) before the omission remains in place.
Beginnings and ends of quotations
Indicate an omission at the start or end of a quotation only when it is extremely important to tell your reader that you have begun or ended in mid-quotation. Since you can usually expect the reader to assume that such is the case, you will very rarely need ellipses before or after quotations.
"Normalizing" punctuation and capitalization
When you omit material at the beginning or end of a quotation without using an ellipsis, silently "normalize" punctuation and capitalization. In other words, make them what they would have been if you had omitted nothing, even though a change from lower case to capital letters, or vice versa, is required in the quoted matter.
Example #3
Original: "It has often been argued that art in itself is unmoral, neither good nor bad. This is perhaps true of the THING which is music, painting, poetry, etc. But the thing is the PRODUCT of some person's mind, and the intention of that mind was either good or bad morally when it produced the thing."
--Motion Picture Production Code of 1930
Whittled down: "It has often been argued that art in itself is unmoral. ... This is perhaps true of the THING ... but the thing is the PRODUCT of some person's mind."Note that the quoting writer has chosen to combine the second and third sentences, and therefore has silently lowercased "But." Also notice that although the writer does not quote the end of the third sentence, she does not use an ellipsis to indicate the omission, and has placed the period where it grammatically should be.
Omissions from poetry
If you're omitting less than a line, use ellipses normall. For instance, the opening lines of Homer's Odyssey can be shortened thus: "Sing in me, muse, and ... tell the story / of that man skilled in all ways of contending."
If you wish to omit a line or more, however, use a line of space periods the length of either the line preceeding or the line following them.
Example #4
Two Chinamen, behind them a third,
Are carved in Lapis Lazuli.
...............................................
Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,
Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.
--W. B. Yeats, "Lapis Lazuli"
Pauses and hesitations
You may, occasionally, use an ellipsis to indicate a reflexive pause or hesitation within your text. Keep this use of ellipses to a minimum ... particularly in formal writing.
Example #5
"Like Reagan, Baudrillard prefers a higher form of banality, and 'astral America,' an America suspended in the heavens, lost in the cosmos, a constellation, a starry night, a myth, a ... movie."
--J. Hoberman
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