What is an Ellipsis?
An ellipsis is a grammatical tool which can be used to cut down lengthy quotations or simply to focus upon the relevant points in a quotation being used. It is comprised of three dots which indicate where the author has made an omission, like this:
‘…’
Although some style guides require spaces on either side of the ellipsis this is not usually necessary. Some also stipulate that the ellipsis should be enclosed within square brackets to indicate that the original text has been edited; just as all other edits by authors are indicated by square brackets. This is now generally considered outdated, but be sure to check with your own University or style guide. It would be used multiple times to shorten a paragraph like this, taken from Clive James’ book Cultural Amnesia: ‘There is a consoling mythology…which would have us believe that genius operates beyond donkey work. Thus we are told reassuringly that…Shakespeare didn’t care about grammar…Shakespeare, far from being careless about grammar, could depart from it in any direction only because he had first mastered it as a structure’. The original paragraph contained more examples of genius in list form, including Einstein and Mozart, but here the ellipsis is a useful tool which can be used to condense the topic and make the quotation more concise. When using an ellipsis, it is important that the remaining sentence which you have chopped and edited still makes sense. Cutting a verb which is crucial to the meaning of the following clauses or leaving in an object which has no verb will make the quotation incomprehensible to the reader. Check carefully that what you have omitted is not crucial to the meaning of the sentence. In some instances, an ellipsis is used not to indicate an omission but to create a pause, perhaps for comic effect or dramatic tension. In these instances, an ellipsis is used much like a comma and so should be followed by a space, like this: ‘They think it’s all over… it is now!’ It can also be used to indicate a trailing off of speech: ‘I wonder if maybe I could…’