Ellipses

an icon showing an ellipsis, which is made of three periods.An ellipsis (plural ellipses) is a series of three periods.

As with other punctuation marks, there is some contention about its usage, namely, whether or not there should be a space between the periods (. . .) or not (…). MLA, APA, and Chicago, the most common style guides for students, support having spaces between the periods. Other documentation styles you may encounter, such as in journalism, may not.

Quotations

Like the editorial brackets we just learned about, you will primarily see ellipses used in quotations, where they indicate a missing portion. According to most conventions, ellipses don’t require editorial brackets because they are understood already to include an editorial decision to elide material, but be aware that instructors might have their own preferences. Look at the following passage:

Sauropod dinosaurs are the biggest animals to have ever walked on land. They are instantly recognized by their long, sweeping necks and whiplashed tails, and nearly always portrayed moving in herds, being stalked by hungry predators.

In recent years, a huge amount of taxonomic effort from scientists has vastly increased the number of known species of sauropod. What we now know is that in many areas we had two or more species co-existing.

The passage contains more information than you need to include in your essay. Here’s how to cut it down:

Sauropod dinosaurs are the biggest animals to have ever walked on land. They are instantly recognized by their long, sweeping necks and whiplashed tails. . . . In recent years . . . [research has shown] that in many areas we had two or more species co-existing.

In the block quotation above, you can see that the first ellipsis appears to have four dots. (“They are instantly recognized by their long, sweeping necks and whiplashed tails. . . .”) However, this is just a period followed by an ellipsis. This is because ellipses do not remove punctuation marks when the original punctuation still is in use; they are instead used in conjunction with original punctuation. This is true for all punctuation marks, including periods, commas, semicolons, question marks, and exclamation points.

By looking at two sympatric species (those that lived together) from the fossil graveyards of the Late Jurassic of North America . . . , [David Button] tried to work out what the major dietary differences were between sauropod dinosaurs, based on their anatomy.

One of the best ways to check yourself is to take out the ellipsis. If the sentence or paragraph is still correctly punctuated, you’ve used the ellipsis correctly. (Just remember to put it back in!)

Practice

Read the paragraphs below:

Camarasaurus, with its more mechanically efficient skull, was capable of generating much stronger bite forces than Diplodocus. This suggests that Camarasaurus was capable of chomping through tougher plant material than Diplodocus, and was perhaps even capable of a greater degree of oral processing before digestion. This actually ties in nicely with previous hypotheses of different diets for each, which were based on apparent feeding heights and inferences made from wear marks on their fossilized teeth.

Diplodocus seems to have been well-adapted, despite its weaker skull, to a form of feeding known as branch stripping, where leaves are plucked from branches as the teeth are dragged along them. The increased flexibility of the neck of Diplodocus compared to other sauropods seems to support this too.

Do the following quotations use ellipses – and surrounding punctuation – conventionally?

  1. This suggests that Camarasaurus was capable of chomping through tougher plant material than Diplodocus. . . This actually ties in nicely with previous hypotheses of different diets for each.
  2. Diplodocus seems to have been well-adapted, . . . to a form of feeding known as branch stripping.

Pauses

The ellipsis can also indicate . . . a pause. This use is typically informal, and not typically a convention of standardized academic English.