ellipsis

Writing

(noun)

A punctuation mark consisting of three periods in a row, used to indicate an omission, a pause, or additional, unmentioned list items.

Statistics

(noun)

a mark consisting of three periods, historically with spaces in between, before, and after them " . . . ", nowadays a single character " (used in printing to indicate an omission)

Related Terms

Examples of ellipsis in the following topics:

  • Em-Dashes and En-Dashes

    • Similarly, they can be used in place of an ellipsis to illustrate an instance where a sentence is stopped short because the speaker is interrupted or too emotional to continue.

  • Parentheses

    • The bracketed expression "[sic]" is used after a quote or reprinted text to indicate the passage appears exactly as in the original source; a bracketed ellipsis "[...]" is often used to indicate deleted material; bracketed comments indicate when original text has been modified for clarity.

  • APA: How to Reference Different Types of Sources

    • List the first six authors, then an ellipsis, then the final author.

  • Summation Notation

    • For the summation of the sequence of consecutive integers from 1 to 100 one could use an addition expression involving an ellipsis to indicate the missing terms: $1+2+3+4+\dots + 99+100$.

  • Abbreviations and Acronyms

    • A small number of acronyms use slashes to show an ellipsis, as in "w/o" for "without."

  • Introducing and Formatting Quotations

    • Use an ellipsis (...) to indicate that there is more to the quote than you offer here.

  • Sets of Numbers

    • where the ellipsis ($\cdots$) indicates that the list continues in the obvious way.

  • Suggestions for Listening and Further Study

    • For adults, Ellipsis Arts publishes traditional music from non-Western cultures.