If your work uses any em-dashes (—) or ellipses (...) you may have considered the following conundrum: should you enclose them with spaces, or not? And should you space out the ellipse . . . or not?
Well... it depends.
Closed versus spaced ellipse
What are we talking about?
Closed ellipse: ...Spaced ellipse: . . .
An ellipse MAY be represented by three periods, but your word processor (Word, for example) may replace those three periods with another, special character, an ellipse.
(How the ellipse is presented on screen then depends on the font, and if the program / OS you use does font replacement if a Unicode codepoint is undefined in the font... Argh! Let's not go there.)
Only remember: three periods (an ellipse) may be turned into a special character.
An ellipse is a single character, represented by three periods.
And it may be very hard to spot the difference on-screen! More importantly though... how do you format them properly?
Ellipse examples
Confused myself I grabbed a bunch of novels, both printed paperbacks as well as e-books, and had a good look at how they did it. Here are some of the results:
Clive Cussler - Dragon - US - doesn't seem to have ellipses at all
Dan Brown - Angels & Demons - US - has the 'spaced' ellipses . . .
Terry Pratchett - Jingo - UK - spaced ellipses
Oliver Bleeck - Het Magische Schild - NL - spaced ellipses
Greg Bear - God's Smidse - NL - closed ellipse followed by space
Suzanne Collins - The Hunger Games - UK - closed ellipse followed by space
Cornelia Funke - Heart of Ink - US (?) - space + closed ellipse + space
Frank Herbert - Heretics of Dune - US - spaced ellipse surrounded by spaces
Zach Hughes - seems to use em-dash instead of ellipses
Naomi Novik - same
Frank Herbert - Dune - US - is a mix of both (?)
My son lives and is... human. I knew he was ... but ... he lives. Now, I can go on living.
CMOS - spaced ellipse
AP - space + closed ellipse + space
Ah! So it depends on the rule set / standard, and I'm pretty sure other regions will have different rule sets. Use whatever standard you prefer, and stick to it. But...
Non-standard
When sampling different books I noticed that some editors / publishers do not follow the CMOS or AP, but have their own standards. See the examples above, but I would also advice to do a few tests and see how your text is rendered in a browser, in Word, on a Kindle or Kobo, or on platforms such as Wattpad.
This may especially of interest to those who write e-books, which are read on smaller devices, and require reflow. Many reflow engines don't recognise em-dashes or ellipses, and to them something like :
'she was lost...lost and forgotten'
may cause a line break like this:
she was <line break>
lost...lost and forgotten
even when you might prefer
she was lost...
lost and forgotten
It all depends on the word processor and the reader being used. You can't always predict what will happen.
To make sure reflow always work, you may break the rules, and opt for [ellipse]+[space] inside paragraphs.
Inside a paragraph
AP - She was lost . . . lost and forgotten - [spaced ellipse]
CMOS - She was lost ... lost and forgotten - [space] + [ellipse] + [space]
Reflow optimized: I suggest to place a space after the ellipse.
reflow optimized - She was lost... lost and forgotten - [ellipse] + [space]
At the end of a paragraph
AP - The silence was deafening . . . - [spaced ellipse] + [new paragraph]
CMOS - The silence was deafening ... - [space] + [closed ellipse] + [new paragraph]
Reflow optimized: don't follow the ellipse with a space at the end of a paragraph, or when it is the last part of a dialogue, just before the closing double quote-sign.
reflow optimized - The silence was deafening... - [closed ellipse] + [new paragraph]
reflow optimized - He said, "I don't think so..."
Em-dash examples
Something similar goes on with em-dashes. For example, the Suzanne Collins novel has the em-dashes surrounded by spaces. So does the White Wolf RPG stuff, but TSR / WOTC (also US) doesn't have spaces surrounding their em-dashes.
Some publishers use space en-dash space, some use an em-dash, some use something that's even bigger than an em-dash. Oh yeah, but then again... that's font driven... argh!
Karen Yin says this:
Again, if you consider e-book releases and reflows, you may consider deviating from the standard.
Inside a paragraph
AP - She was lost — not a state to be in — and didn't know where to go.
CMOS - She was lost—not a state to be in—and didn't know where to go.
Reflow optimized: I suggest to surround the em-dash with spaces if it's inside a paragraph.
e-book optimized - She was lost — not a state to be in — and didn't know where to go.
At the end of a line of dialogue
AP - She said, "I don't know . . . Wait, I — "
CMOS - She said, "I don't know...Wait, I—"
Reflow optimized: at the end of a line of dialogue I suggest not to use any spaces surrounding the em-dash.
reflow optimized - She said, "I don't know... Wait, I—"
If you fear even that might lead to irregular alignments / reflows, you might try:
Reflow optimized variant - She said, "I don't know... Wait, I —"
See here how to modify the formatting using Word.
More
- APS versus Chicago (AP versus CMOS)
- Converting and formatting manuscripts
- To Smart Quote or Not to Smart Quote, and reflow Ellipses and Em-dashes
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