Sentences that trail off and are not completed should end with four
periods.

Nope, it IS three.  Don't believe me, ask MS Word 7.0 or a writing guide.
MS Word 7.0 will change ... into one character, assumedly spacing out the
periods "properly" (although what the hell "properly" is eludes me), but a
fourth period will just sit there making .... two characters.

     Sorry, that doesn't matter. First, the ... as a single character is,
IMO, really hard to read. However, that is irrelevent. If you have an
elipsis in the middle of a sentence, the proper number of periods is 3.
However, when the elipsis ends a sentence, the English laguage requires
the use of 4 periods.

27th.  And actually, twenty-seventh.

Yeah, actually 27th.  It is grammatically correct, and usually preferable,
for all non-single digit (including decimals) to be written in numeric form
with the possible exception of academic papers.

     Unless you have a single digit number preceding the double digit number,
in which case you have to spell out the double digit number. Similarly, in
very formal writing, the double digit number gets spelled out. Three digit
numbers make all numbers in a sentence get written in numerical form, though.
--
Ben Kosse bmk7411@cs.rit.edu                                    <#391>
BGC Otaku and worshipper of the Red-Eyed Goddess. Member of ShAS.
Anime, RPG's, computers, poetry (read/write), music (listen/compose).
Author of the Bubblegum Crisis theme pack (see the homepage below).
Homepage with anime and other interests. (http://www.rit.edu/~bmk7411)