ellipsis

Writing

(noun)

A punctuation mark consisting of three periods in a row, used to indicate an omission, a pause, or additional, unmentioned list items.

Statistics

(noun)

a mark consisting of three periods, historically with spaces in between, before, and after them " . . . ", nowadays a single character " (used in printing to indicate an omission)

Related Terms

  • summation notation

Examples of ellipsis in the following topics:

  • Em-Dashes and En-Dashes

    • Similarly, they can be used in place of an ellipsis to illustrate an instance where a sentence is stopped short because the speaker is interrupted or too emotional to continue.
  • Parentheses

    • The bracketed expression "[sic]" is used after a quote or reprinted text to indicate the passage appears exactly as in the original source; a bracketed ellipsis "[...]" is often used to indicate deleted material; bracketed comments indicate when original text has been modified for clarity.
  • APA: How to Reference Different Types of Sources

    • List the first six authors, then an ellipsis, then the final author.
  • Summation Notation

    • For the summation of the sequence of consecutive integers from 1 to 100 one could use an addition expression involving an ellipsis to indicate the missing terms: $1+2+3+4+\dots + 99+100$.
  • Abbreviations and Acronyms

    • A small number of acronyms use slashes to show an ellipsis, as in "w/o" for "without."
  • Introducing and Formatting Quotations

    • Use an ellipsis (...) to indicate that there is more to the quote than you offer here.
  • Sets of Numbers

    • where the ellipsis ($\cdots$) indicates that the list continues in the obvious way.
  • Suggestions for Listening and Further Study

    • For adults, Ellipsis Arts publishes traditional music from non-Western cultures.
Subjects
  • Accounting
  • Algebra
  • Art History
  • Biology
  • Business
  • Calculus
  • Chemistry
  • Communications
  • Economics
  • Finance
  • Management
  • Marketing
  • Microbiology
  • Physics
  • Physiology
  • Political Science
  • Psychology
  • Sociology
  • Statistics
  • U.S. History
  • World History
  • Writing

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