# Ellipsis

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Ellipsis
Punctuation Word dividers General typography Intellectual property Currency apostrophe ( ’ ' ) brackets ( [ ], ( ), { }, ⟨ ⟩ ) colon ( : ) comma ( , ، 、 ) dash ( ‒, –, —, ― ) ellipsis ( …, ..., . . . ) exclamation mark ( ! ) full stop / period ( . ) hyphen ( ‐ ) hyphen-minus ( - ) question mark ( ? ) quotation marks ( ‘ ’, “ ”, ' ', " " ) semicolon ( ; ) slash / stroke / solidus ( /,  ⁄  ) interpunct ( · ) space ( ) ( ) ( ) ampersand ( & ) asterisk ( * ) at sign ( @ ) backslash ( \ ) bullet ( • ) caret ( ^ ) dagger ( †, ‡ ) degree ( ° ) ditto mark ( ″ ) inverted exclamation mark ( ¡ ) inverted question mark ( ¿ ) number sign / pound / hash / octothorpe ( # ) numero sign ( № ) obelus ( ÷ ) ordinal indicator ( º, ª ) percent, per mil ( %, ‰ ) plus and minus ( + − ) basis point ( ‱ ) pilcrow ( ¶ ) prime ( ′, ″, ‴ ) section sign ( § ) tilde ( ~ ) underscore / understrike ( _ ) vertical bar / broken bar / pipe ( ¦, | ) copyright symbol ( © ) registered trademark ( ® ) service mark ( ℠ ) sound recording copyright ( ℗ ) trademark ( ™ ) currency (generic) ( ¤ ) currency (specific) ( ) asterism ( ⁂ ) hedera ( ❧ ) index / fist ( ☞ ) interrobang ( ‽ ) irony punctuation ( ⸮ ) lozenge ( ◊ ) reference mark ( ※ ) tie ( ⁀ ) diacritical marks logic symbols whitespace characters non-English quotation style ( « », „ ” ) Chinese punctuation Hebrew punctuation Japanese punctuation Korean punctuation
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Template:Sister Ellipsis (plural ellipses; from the Template:Lang-grc, élleipsis, "omission" or "falling short") is a series of dots that usually indicates an intentional omission of a word, sentence, or whole section from a text without altering its original meaning.[1] Depending on their context and placement in a sentence, ellipses can also indicate an unfinished thought, a leading statement, a slight pause, or a nervous or awkward silence. Aposiopesis is the use of an ellipsis to trail off into silence—for example: "But I thought he was Template:J When placed at the beginning or end of a sentence, the ellipsis can also inspire a feeling of melancholy or longing.

The most common form of an ellipsis is a row of three periods or full stops (. . .) or a precomposed triple-dot glyph (). The usage of the em dash (—) can overlap the usage of the ellipsis, especially in dialogue. Style guides often have their own rules governing the use of ellipses. For example, the Chicago Manual of Style recommends that an ellipsis be formed by typing three periods, each with a space on both sides.

The triple-dot punctuation mark is also called a suspension point, points of ellipsis, periods of ellipsis, or colloquially, "dot-dot-dot".[2]

## In writing

It is used to build tension or show that the sentence has been left unfinished or unstarted.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, an ellipsis was often used when a writer intentionally omitted a specific proper noun, such as a location: "Jan was born on . . . Street in Warsaw."

### In French

In French, the ellipsis is commonly used at the end of lists to represent et cetera.

## In mathematical notation

An ellipsis is also often used in mathematics to mean "and so forth". In a list, between commas, or following a comma, a normal ellipsis is used, as in:

${\displaystyle 1,2,3,\ldots ,100\,.}$

To indicate the omission of values in a repeated operation, an ellipsis raised to the center of the line is used between two operation symbols or following the last operation symbol, as in:

${\displaystyle 1+2+3+\cdots +100\,}$

(though sometimes, for example, in Russian mathematical texts, normal, non-raised, ellipses are used even in repeated summations[8]).

The latter formula means the sum of all natural numbers from 1 to 100. However, it is not a formally defined mathematical symbol. Repeated summations or products may similarly be denoted using capital sigma and capital pi notation, respectively:

${\displaystyle 1+2+3+\cdots +100\ =\sum _{n=1}^{100}n}$
${\displaystyle 1\times 2\times 3\times \cdots \times 100\ =\prod _{n=1}^{100}n=100!}$ (see factorial)

Normally dots should be used only where the pattern to be followed is clear, the exception being to show the indefinite continuation of an irrational number such as:

${\displaystyle \pi =3.14159265\ldots }$

Sometimes, it is useful to display a formula compactly, for example:

${\displaystyle 1+4+9+\cdots +n^{2}+\cdots +400\,.}$

Another example is the set of zeros of the cosine function.

${\displaystyle \left\{\pm {\frac {\pi }{2}},\pm {\frac {3\pi }{2}},\pm {\frac {5\pi }{2}},\ldots \right\}\,.}$

There are many related uses of the ellipsis in set notation.

The diagonal and vertical forms of the ellipsis are particularly useful for showing missing terms in matrices, such as the size-n identity matrix

${\displaystyle I_{n}={\begin{bmatrix}1&0&\cdots &0\\0&1&\cdots &0\\\vdots &\vdots &\ddots &\vdots \\0&0&\cdots &1\end{bmatrix}}.}$

The use of ellipses in mathematical proofs is often discouraged because of the potential for ambiguity. For this reason, and because the ellipsis supports no systematic rules for symbolic calculation, in recent years some authors have recommended avoiding its use in mathematics altogether.[9]

## Computer interfaces

{{ safesubst:#invoke:Unsubst||$N=Unreferenced section |date=__DATE__ |$B= {{ safesubst:#invoke:Unsubst||$N=Unreferenced |date=__DATE__ |$B= {{#invoke:Message box|ambox}} }} }} Ellipses are often used in an operating system's taskbars or web browser tabs to indicate that a user interface string is longer than what can fit in the screen. Hovering the cursor over the tab often displays a tooltip of the full title. When many programs are open, or during a "tab explosion" in web browsing, the tabs may be reduced in size so much that no characters from the actual titles show, and ellipses take up all the space besides the program icon or favicon.

In many user interface guidelines, a "…" after the name of a command implies that the user will need to provide further information, for example in a subsequent dialog box, before the action can be completed. A typical example is the Save As… command, which after being clicked will usually require the user to enter a filename, as opposed to Save where the file will usually be saved under its existing name.

An ellipsis character after a status message signifies that an operation is in progress and may take some time, as in "Downloading updates…".

## Programming languages

The ellipsis is used as an operator in some programming languages. The precise meaning varies by language, but it generally involves something dealing with multiple items. One of its most common uses is in defining variadic functions which can take an unknown number of arguments in the C, C++ and Java languages. See Ellipsis (programming operator).

## On the Internet and in text messaging

The ellipsis is a non-verbal cue that is often used in computer-mediated interactions, in particular in synchronous genres, such as chat. The reason behind its popularity is the fact that it allows people to indicate in writing several functions:

• the sign of ellipsis can function as a floor holding device, and signal that more is to come, for instance when people break up longer turns in chat[10]
• dot-dot-dot can be used systematically to enact linguistic politeness, for instance indicating topic change or hesitation[11]
• suspension dots can be turn construction units to signal silence, for example when indicating disagreement, disapproval or confusion [12]

Although an ellipsis is technically complete with three periods (...), its rise in popularity as a "trailing-off" or "silence" indicator, particularly in mid-20th-century comic strip and comic book prose writing, has led to expanded uses online. Today, extended ellipsis anywhere from two to dozens of periods have become common constructions in Internet chat rooms and text messages.[13] The extent of repetition in itself might serve as an additional contextualization or paralinguistic cue, to "extend the lexical meaning of the words, add character to the sentences, and allow fine-tuning and personalisation of the message"[14]

## Computer representations

In computing, several ellipsis characters have been codified, depending on the system used.

In the Unicode standard, there are the following characters:

Name Character Unicode HTML entity name or
Numeric character reference
Use
Horizontal ellipsis U+2026 &hellip; General
Laotian ellipsis U+0EAF &#x0EAF; General
Mongolian ellipsis U+1801 &#x1801; General
Thai ellipsis U+0E2F &#x0E2F; General
Vertical ellipsis U+22EE &vellip; Mathematics
Midline horizontal ellipsis U+22EF &#x22EF; Mathematics
Up-right diagonal ellipsis U+22F0 &#x22F0; Mathematics
Down-right diagonal ellipsis U+22F1 &#x22F1; Mathematics
Presentation form for vertical horizontal ellipsis U+FE19 &#xFE19; Vertical form

In Windows, it can be inserted with Template:Key pressTemplate:Key pressTemplate:Key pressTemplate:Key press.

In OS X, it can be inserted with Template:Key press (on an English language keyboard).

In Linux, it can be inserted with Template:Key press

In Chinese and sometimes in Japanese, ellipsis characters are made by entering two consecutive horizontal ellipsis (U+2026).Template:Clarify In vertical texts, the application should rotate the symbol accordingly.

Unicode recognizes a series of three period characters (U+002E) as compatibility equivalent (though not canonical) to the horizontal ellipsis character.[15]

In HTML, the horizontal ellipsis character may be represented by the entity reference &hellip; (since HTML 4.0), and the vertical ellipsis character by the entity reference &vellip; (since HTML 5.0).[16] Alternatively, in HTML, XML, and SGML, a numeric character reference such as &#x2026; or &#8230; can be used.

In the TeX typesetting system, the following types of ellipsis are available:

Character name Character TeX markup
Lower ellipsis ${\displaystyle \ldots \,\!}$ \ldots
Centred ellipsis ${\displaystyle \cdots \,\!}$ \cdots
Diagonal ellipsis ${\displaystyle \ddots \,\!}$ \ddots
Vertical ellipsis ${\displaystyle \vdots \,\!}$ \vdots
Up-right diagonal ellipsis \reflectbox{\ddots}

The horizontal ellipsis character also appears in the following older character maps:

Note that ISO/IEC 8859 encoding series provides no code point for ellipsis.

As with all characters, especially those outside the ASCII range, the author, sender and receiver of an encoded ellipsis must be in agreement upon what bytes are being used to represent the character. Naive text processing software may improperly assume that a particular encoding is being used, resulting in mojibake.

The Chicago Style Q&A recommends to avoid the use of  (U+2026) character in manuscripts and to place three periods plus two nonbreaking spaces (. . .) instead, so that an editor, publisher, or designer can replace them later.[17]

In Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1), the ellipsis is used as an extension marker to indicate the possibility of type extensions in future revisions of a protocol specification. In a type constraint expression like A ::= INTEGER (0..127, ..., 256..511) an ellipsis is used to separate the extension root from extension additions. The definition of type A in version 1 system of the form A ::= INTEGER (0..127, ...) and the definition of type A in version 2 system of the form A ::= INTEGER (0..127, ..., 256..511) constitute an extension series of the same type A in different versions of the same specification. The ellipsis can also be used in compound type definitions to separate the set of fields belonging to the extension root from the set of fields constituting extension additions. Here is an example: B ::= SEQUENCE { a INTEGER, b INTEGER, ..., c INTEGER }

## References

1. thefreedictionary.com
2. as coined by Virginia Woolf in her short story The Mark on The Wall -- or so do notes in Penguin Books' edition (Virginia Woolf: Selected Short Stories) suggest.
3. Raymond Chandler, Frank MacShane. Raymond Chandler: Stories and Early Novels. First Edition. New York: Library of America. 1995. Note on the Texts.
4. Fowler, H. Ramsey, Jane E. Aaron, Murray McArthur. The Little, Brown Handbook. Fourth Canadian Edition. Toronto: Pearson Longman. 2005. p. 440.
5. Goldstein, Norm, editor. "Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law". 2005. pp.328–329.
6. https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/省略号
7. Мильчин А. Э. Издательский словарь-справочник.— Изд. 3-е, испр. и доп., Электронное — М.: ОЛМА-Пресс, 2006. (in Russian)
8. Roland Backhouse, Program Construction: Calculating Implementations from Specifications. Wiley (2003), page 138
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13. Template:Cite web
14. UnicodeData.txt: 2026;HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS;Po;0;ON;<compat> 002E 002E 002E;;;;N;;;;;
15. Template:Cite web
16. Template:Cite web

## Further reading

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• Halliday, M.A.K, and Ruqayia, H. (1976), Cohesion in English, London: Longman.
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