Punctuation education

Nick Shinn

I can thoroughly recommend this brilliant book, which I recently came across, as having some relevance to type designers—especially in showing instances of how punctuation marks appear in grammatical examples.

For instance, in the third image shown, note that an ellipsis at the end of a sentence, following a period, should create the effect of four equally-spaced periods. And the exclam’s dot likewise.

Joshua Langman

I build my own ellipses, three- and four-dot, for this reason. I use nonbreaking spaces between periods, typically condensed to 50% width (automated with GREP). One consequence of this is that the internal spacing within ellipses varies like other word spaces in justified text. I have seen some typographers cite this as a reason to use prefab ellipses instead, but I rather like the effect.

John Hudson

I often space my /ellipsis dots in such a way that a sequence either preceded or followed by a /period will be evenly spaced, but usually this means offsetting them slightly to the right.

Craig Eliason

I've always leaned towards even spacing too, but for the sake of argument, doesn't evening out the spaces reduce the information you're providing the reader, since they then cannot discern whether the four dots are a period-ellipsis sequence or an ellipsis-period sequence?—which is a real, though admittedly subtle, semantic difference.

• I saw Bob and Frank. Rosemary wasn't there, but Sally showed up too. [original]
• I saw Bob ... . Rosemary wasn't there, but Sally showed up too. [period goes last because omitted text precedes it]
• I saw Bob and Frank. ... Sally showed up too. [period goes first because omitted text follows it]

John Hudson

When writing, I space ellipsis differently depending whether I am using them to indicate elided ... in quoted text, or unspoken....

LeMo aka PatternMan aka Frank E Blokland

From an aesthetic point of view, I am not a big fan of the combination of a period and an ellipsis. That perception could well be the result of my typographic conditioning, the latter implying that it was either a period or an ellipsis, but never both. I also give the ellipsis more space between the dots than three periods in a row –also for aesthetic preferences. That said, one can always create contextual alternates, of course.

Anyway, typographers may have their aesthetic preferences and express them, but ultimately it is the authors and publishers who decide, I reckon. Admittedly, it was a bit lazy, but I asked Chattie to gather some guidelines from three reputable style guides:

The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS): In CMOS, the ellipsis (three dots) generally replaces a period at the end of a sentence, and no period is used in addition to the ellipsis. The ellipsis alone signifies the omission or trailing off. However, if the ellipsis occurs at the end of a sentence and the sentence itself is a complete thought, CMOS would suggest placing the period before the ellipsis (e.g., “He didn’t know what to say…”).

The Associated Press (AP) Stylebook: The AP style generally recommends using just the ellipsis for omitted text or a trailing thought, but it would also generally recommend adding a period if the ellipsis occurs at the end of a sentence, effectively replacing the period with the ellipsis (so it would look like “…”). They don’t typically advocate for a period plus an ellipsis.

The Oxford Style Manual: Similar to CMOS, this manual might allow a period to come before an ellipsis if the sentence is complete. The period signals the end of the sentence, while the ellipsis suggests a trailing thought. However, the rules are generally flexible and aim for clarity.

According to Chattie, style guides generally do not encourage a period plus an ellipsis in the traditional sense (i.e., four dots) unless there is a specific stylistic or narrative reason. Instead, they prefer the ellipsis to serve both as a sign of omission and an incomplete thought or pause. When the sentence is complete, an ellipsis alone or a period before the ellipsis is common.

John Hudson

would suggest placing the period before the ellipsis

That implies the trailing thought is external to the sentence.

Christian Thalmann

I find the ellipses in that book jarringly wide  .  .  .  and I always thought four dots in a row were reserved for WhatsApp messages by older relatives. (Did you receive my message..........?)

Joshua Langman

The Chicago ellipsis is notoriously widely spaced. I respect Chicago's advice on many things, but I tend to ignore them when it comes to typography. CMOS is written by editors, not typographers. Craig — when that sort of forensic textual distinction is necessary, editors will sometimes use bracketed ellipses.

Thomas Phinney

These days, my ideal spacing for an ellipsis is about midway between (1) a set of consecutive periods, and (2) a set of consecutive periods with single spaces between them.

I haven’t done this yet, and it ignores Craig’s not-crazy concern, but it seems to me that if the goal is even spacing, and one likes bigger spacing in the ellipsis (which I do), then: rather than having tight internal spacing of the ellipsis, one could do a four-dot ligature that would replace period-ellipsis and ellipsis-period, and maintain ellipsis spacing.

Nick Shinn

Actually, although I said “…should create the effect…” that wasn’t a topic broached by Ms Gordon, and I was assuming the typography was prescriptive; but perhaps it’s just the way that the Cochin font is configured.

Kent Lew

As a type designer, my approach to the ellipsis is to have the distance between the dots equal to the width of the space — i.e., collapsing the sidebearings of the period. In my view this yields a nice in-between such as Thomas mentions.

The sidebearings of the ellipsis are calculated so that when set next to a period, the spacing between period and ellipsis is the same as the intra-ellipsis spacing, yielding four equally distributed dots.

Regarding the subtle distinction that Craig questions, the spacing between a letter and the sequence will subtly signal which is which: if an ellipsis before the period, the dots will stand away from the preceding letter, as befits the ellipsis; if a period before an ellipsis, they will fall closer to the preceding letter, as befits the period.

Shown here: 1) periods set closed, 2) ellipsis, 3) spaced periods, 4) ellipsis-period, 5) period-ellipsis.

(Not shown here: I will sometimes include a positive kern for period-period to mimic how I space the ellipsis, and I will often kern the ellipsis to the space so that it doesn't float too excessively when set spaced, as it does here.)

John Hudson

I think widely spaced ellipsis are something of an Anglo-American preference. Hart’s Rules, for example, specifies a full space between the dots when used to indicate ommitted text, and I see this sort of thing in American books fairly frequently.

Tschichold, in contrast, thought that ellipsis dots should not be spaced out, but that they should have space around them, so preceding or following punctuation should be separated by a word space.