“If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all the time.” Abraham Lincoln, as recorded in BARTLETT’S FAMOUS QUOTATIONS
You may recognize the quotation above, at least in part. It’s most often rendered like this:
“. . . It is true that you may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” The series of three dots in the shortened quote is called an ellipsis; it signals that some of the original words have been omitted. The meaning of the original quotation, however, has not changed.
Ellipses (plural) tell us one or more words have been left out of a quotation. They’re formed on the keyboard by typing dot-space-dot-space-dot-space(. . .) or by hitting Ctrl-Alt-period(…). Only three dots are used—never less and never more. When used at the end of a quote, treat the last dot as you would the end of a sentence and add a period. But the ellipsis itself is still only three dots.
They can be inserted anywhere in a quotation, as long as the meaning of the quote is not altered. Lincoln’s quotation could be amended to: “. . . It is true that you may fool all the people some of the time . . . but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” Here’s another example:
The store policy states, “The item must be returned in its original packaging and with the receipt, or the customer forfeits his ability to receive cash in exchange for the returned merchandise.”
The store policy states, “The item must be returned in its original packaging and with the receipt . . .”
The uses of ellipses are both formal, as above, or informal, as in emails and casual correspondence. In these cases, the ellipsis indicates a pause or break in train of thought:
There’s so much to do before company arrives. . .how will I manage?
Oh well . . .
To sum it up, here’s the ellipses definition: use ellipses when you want to shorten a quotation or indicate a pause in the train of thought…and never more than three dots!