Monday, March 30, 2015

A perfect ellipsis

Getting the ellipsis right in pixels is a tricky business. Three spaced periods (as The Chicago Manual of Style recommends) look . . . ungainly. Four spaced periods (an ellipsis plus a period) can look ridiculous . . . .

The horizontal ellipsis character (made by typing …) looks … better. But when that a period follows that character, things look a bit off …. See how much larger the final period looks?

Last night, when I was typing a short post, I realized that I could make an ellipsis and period by using the hair space ( ). Periods and hair spaces make a perfect ellipsis-plus:  . . . . Or in plain English: . . . .

By Michael Leddy at 10:30 AM

4 comments:

  1. SlywyMarch 31, 2015 7:50 AM

    I don't like the … ellipsis — too crammed and Microsofty.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Michael LeddyMarch 31, 2015 7:59 AM

    I prefer . . . in print.

    ReplyDelete
  3. SlywyMarch 31, 2015 9:41 PM

    Ha, Blogger changed the code I put in to HTML. For some reason, I think more basic HTML.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Michael LeddyMarch 31, 2015 9:48 PM

    You need the code tags: < code > and < /code >, minus the spaces.

    ReplyDelete

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