Punctuation Spaces between ellipses, or not?

I can't imagine ever writing in American. It would read like an Abba song.

 

... . . . ...
... . . . ...
... . . . ...
... . . . ...
...

 

I don't think I get whatever point you're trying to make here.

 

I think it's morse code.

 

This has been bugging me for ages. Some publishers don't leave a space between words (such as...instead of ... ). And when it's at the end of a sentence some publishers add a stop and others don't (.... and not ...).

I use ellipses a certain way, but when I see them used differently I ask if the way I use them is unpopular or more often considered wrong. Take how magazines and newspapers differ, from The Guardian to The New Yorker - it's maddening.

 

Should have dashes for the spaced out ellipses

... ___ ...
... ___ ...
_.. . _._ _... _.... .. _._.

_._

 

Whenever I use spaces in between the . it's when I'm quoting something and leaving out sentences (non-fiction). I use true ellipses (no space) when speech is paused/drifts off (fiction). But I imagine writing conventions differ between publishers/editing houses.

Also yes some software does its own thing in stylizing the ellipsis (Word, Scrivener). In my opinion it's best to do what you need to do in order for the software to recognize the ellipsis.

 

Another relevant question: if you write ellipses without spaces between, should you use three separate dots or a single ellipsis character (at least my Word autocorrects to the latter).

Regardless of which one is used (since it sounds like it might be down to preference), it's easy to just search-and-replace if required by an editor.

 

So true, but...

Bah. It changes everywhere all the time, and no one follows the same rules for very long, not even England, at least not from what I can tell reading old books. If Charles Dickens turned in one of his novels as a student in any modern English class on any continent, in would be returned to him covered in red marks. (I do enjoy reading the words "colour" and "theatre" though, but I pronounce them in my head as they're spelled, which makes sentences sound ludicrous.)

As depressing as I find constant English misusage and abuse on the internet and SMS, the idea that it's ruining the language is unfortunately absurd. Spelling, grammar and punctuation have never stopped changing. "Alot" may not be a real word, but it probably will be soon, whether we like it or not. "Awhile" wasn't a word either until enough people misused it right into common usage. Only a minority of people still know how to use dashes and semicolons, so the official rules are bound to change there too. They'll probably become like ellipses formatting or italics vs. quotes for character thoughts, which is to say there is no rule, because no one can agree. I recently noticed that my 2000 reprint of the 1979 edition of "The Elements of Style" still uses Oxford commas, so we can't even trust Strunk and White anymore as a standard. Oh well.