Exemplary Prose:
Essential Writing Skills in Context

Ellipses

Use an ellipsis to indicate an omission within a quotation. Ellipses consist of three spaced periods (i.e., a space before each period and after the last).

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically . . . Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education. Martin Luther King Jr.

Despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, I have not yet been able to answer . . . the great question . . . What does a woman want? Sigmund Freud

If the omitted words come at the end of a sentence, add a fourth period.

Go to The Guide to Grammar and Writing section on Ellipses.

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