In regular text, a space is put before and after the three dots. If you are following an academic style for ellipsis, and you do not want the character to break over two lines, Allen Wyatt of recommends creating non-breaking spaces by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Space Bar (. . .) and this keeps the dots of the ellipsis on the same line. While this option is useful for inserting an ellipsis that will not break over two lines, most academic style require the format of three dots with spaces separating them (. However, the default format for the ellipsis in Word has no spaces between the dots ( …). In Microsoft Word, the ellipsis can be inserted by going to Insert-Symbol-Special Characters. Style guides have different rules for presenting the ellipsis. (For a poem on this type of dash, see this one by Linda Ellis.)įirst, some technical information for creating these two punctuation marks.
As Nancy Tuten points out, these distinctions were known chiefly by professional printers and typesetters until word processing programs enabled all writers to use these marks of punctuation. The dash ( -) we are focusing on is technically called the em-dash because in the days of typewriters, it was formed by typing two hyphens together which was equal to the width of a capital “M” on the keyboard.Īnother dash, the en-dash, which is between the hyphen and em-dash in length-in fact, the width of the keyboard’s capital letter “N”-means “through” and is commonly used with dates and numbers to indicate inclusive periods or sections. The ellipsis consist of three dots in a text (. This discussion will help clarify uses of ellipses and dashes and provide examples, including some from literature. Hyphens have their own special use which was dealt with in an earlier post.
Some writers also use a hyphen instead of an em-dash, but this is incorrect. I see beginning writers misuse or confuse the uses of ellipses and dashes, particularly the em-dash.