Richard Person wrote:
I'm sorry, but that is wrong.
Yes -- but the irony of it all is that Mr. Jones was right the first time, though he
could also have *prepended* a space to the ellipsis if so he chose.
I find the ellipse to be the single most common mistake.
"ellipsis" throughout. "ellipse" is the geometric figure; ellipsis is the three dots.
Curiously, their plurals are identical -- "ellipses".
An ellipse is defined as three dots with a space on either side.
Thus " . . . " is the proper way to write an ellipse.
Well, yes and no.
Y'see, ". . ." looks right -- and is right -- *if* you're using a proportional
font. However, most text editors and mail programs tend to display things in a fixed-
width font, such as Courier New, System, Terminal, or the familiar old 80x25. Now in a
fixed-width font, ". . ." flat-out looks ridiculous -- i t j u s t s o r t o f
f e e l s w r o n g t o l o o k a t , if you see what I mean, because there's
too much space betwoon the periods. "...", on the other hand, looks a great deal more
like the space-separated ellipsis of a proportional font, as there's already twice the
space between the two periods than can be found between any two letters.
This is just one common difference between standard conventions in printed text
and those of the medium we're using now -- for another, I invite you to compare the
paragraph separations in this letter (newline followed by tab) with those in most of the
works posted to this list (doubled newline).
We now return you to your regularly scheduled FFML, already in progress.
--
Aponar's Stolen-Tagline-of-the-Period-Between-Bootups
If cows could fly, everyone would carry an umbrella.