Ellipsis

Forums: English, Esl, Grammar, Punctuation, Ellipsis
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Tom said "I want to lose weight but I cannot control my eating habit. That's why I am still fat."

In using ellipsis, which sentence is correct?

1. Tom said, "I want to lose weight ... I am still fat." (3 dots)
2. Tom said, "I want to lose weight .... I am still fat." (4 dots, the last to indicate full stop of the first sentence in bold above.)

Thanks in advance.

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@tanguatlay,

In a middle of a sentence 3 dots is correct. If you were ending a sentence with and ellipsis, the fourth dot is the period and four dots is the correct usage.

Tom said, "I want to lose weight ... I am still fat." (3 dots) would be correct as you are merging the two sentences together in this paraphrasing to connect the two separate thoughts thusly the ellipsis in the middle of the sentence.

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@tsarstepan,

I only use an ellipsis to indicate an incomplete thought. I don't see that here, though I may be following an incorrect convention.

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@tanguatlay,

tanguatlay wrote:

Tom said "I want to lose weight but I cannot control my eating habit. That's why I am still fat."

In using ellipsis, which sentence is correct?

1. Tom said, "I want to lose weight ... I am still fat." (3 dots)
2. Tom said, "I want to lose weight .... I am still fat."
(4 dots, the last to indicate full stop of the first sentence in bold above.)

Thanks in advance.

Sentence 2 is OK, because u have enuf dots; (the first one is a period).

Sentence 1 is a run-on sentence; (i.e., 2 sentences run together).

David

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@roger,

roger wrote:

I only use an ellipsis to indicate an incomplete thought.
I don't see that here, though I may be following an incorrect convention.

Thay can be used to show a pause.

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@OmSigDAVID,

I use an em dash.

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@roger,

roger wrote:

I use an em dash.

What does em mean?

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@OmSigDAVID,

The letter M. An em dash is about twice as long as an en dash. The latter is often used as a hyphen. On typewritters and software that don't have a character for it, the em dash is often constructed of two short dashes, like -- .

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@roger,

roger wrote:

The letter M. An em dash is about twice as long as an en dash. The latter is often used as a hyphen.
On typewritters and software that don't have a character for it, the em dash is often constructed of two short dashes,
like -- .

It is.

David

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@tanguatlay,

tanguatlay wrote:

Tom said "I want to lose weight but I cannot control my eating habit. That's why I am still fat."

In using ellipsis, which sentence is correct?

1. Tom said, "I want to lose weight ... I am still fat." (3 dots)
2. Tom said, "I want to lose weight .... I am still fat." (4 dots, the last to indicate full stop of the first sentence in bold above.)

Thanks in advance.

First, I would not use an ellipsis in that sentence. There's no interruption of thought. It really doesn't belong here. I would use an em dash (the width of the capital M, shown here as two hyphens.

"I want to lose weight--I am still fat." (no space before or after the dash)

Another way, the semicolon: "I want to lose weight; I am still fat."

Still another way, two sentences. "I want to lose weight. I am still fat."

Second, when four dots are used, it's the first of the four that serves as a period, not the last.

that way. . . . This way

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I think the two important thoughts are:

I cannot control my eating habit . . . I am still fat."

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@OmSigDAVID,

Quote:

Sentence 1 is a run-on sentence; (i.e., 2 sentences run together).

There is nothing ungrammatical or bad about run on sentences. We use them all the time. They are simply a style that has found disfavor in writing.

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Ellipsis

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