Ellipsis with a period/fullstop

Question

While quoting how ellipsis should be used if few sentences are omitted in between. (ommissions are not clauses or words or phrases, but sentences). For example if there is a passage like: This is a book. That is a pen. That is my bag.

So, I am quoting now omitting the middlle sentence. The tex source code:

``This is a book.\ldots That is my bag''

Here is the tex output:

So in the above example if I use a period and \ldots, then the spacing between the period and ellipsis doesn't appear fine.

EDIT: 1 I'm following MLA style guide. And I am using mla-paper package.

Answer 1

From the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Seventh Edition, section 3.7.5. "Ellipsis":

For an ellipsis within a sentence, use three periods with a space before each and a space after the last ( . . . ).

As an example it shows:

Quotation Omitting a Sentence

In discussing the historical relation between politics and the press, William L. Rivers notes:

Presidential control reached its zenith under Andrew Jackson, the extent of whose attention to the press even before he became a candidate is suggested by the fact that he subscribed to twenty newspapers. . . . For a time, the United States Telegraph and the Washington Globe were almost equally favored as party organs, and there were fifty-seven journalists on the government payroll. (7)

So there are no [] or (). For my MLA papers, I have a macro for the "quotation-ellipsis":

\usepackage{xspace}
\newcommand{\el}{{\,\ldots}\xspace}

The small space \, takes care of some weird spacing in \ldots, that seemed to look best to me. \xspace makes sure it works as bla bla \el. and as bla \el bla., i.e. a space is added only if there's no punctuation after the macro. The ellipsis package might be even better for this purpose, but I've never really looked into it since this solution worked for me.

Answer 2

This might just be personal preference on how you specify the spacing. Consequently, this is just one suggestion. Others may have, well, other suggestions.

You could force the space around the ellipsis using a command space \ :

``This is a book.\ldots That is my bag''
``This is a book. \ldots That is my bag''
``This is a book. \ldots\ That is my bag''
``This is a book.\ \ldots\ That is my bag''

See What does \  exactly do? for a discussion on using command space \ .

Answer 3

The answer probably depends on the publication's style guide.

Note, too, that the exact spacing may be altered by other factors (e.g. \frenchspacing).

The ellipsis package documentation (texdoc ellipsis) discusses the issues around this in some detail and the package provides options to satisfy the aesthetes and the style guides -- though not always both at the same time.

Answer 4

Given that you must follow MLA style, you don't have any creative freedom with regard to, say, the use of brackets around the ellipsis, let alone the ellipsis itself. The only thing you can/should do, from a typographic/aesthetic point of view, is to ensure that there's no line break right before the ellipsis. You'd do this by inserting a ~, "non-breaking space" or "tie", right before the ellipsis:

This is a book.~\ldots\ That is my bag.

That way, if LaTeX has to insert a line break next to the ellipsis, it'll happen after the ellipsis. (And force the space after the ellipsis using a command space \, see the other answers.)

Answer 5

It seems that if you just put the \ldots before the period, things work pretty good:

``This is a book\ldots. That is my bag''

Answer 6

You can also use the lips package.

The \lips command generates text ellipses that are closer to what The Chicago Manual of Style suggests than what \dots produces.