English Language & Usage Asked on May 23, 2021
The standard rule is unquestionably ambiguous!
M. USE OF ELLIPSIS POINTS
Three points signal omission of a word or words in a quotation. “Give me liberty or . . . death.”
Bahrych, Merino. Legal Writing and Analysis in a Nutshell 5th edition (2017). p 242.
BUT are there style guides that back the unimpeachably better other preference?
There are really only two options:
- Just the ellipsis on its own: "oil … that has been…"
- The ellipsis in square brackets: "oil […] that has been…"
I personally prefer the version with square brackets, since it is then clear that the ellipsis is not part of the original quote.
I copypasted these quotes from https://examples.yourdictionary.com/ellipsis-examples.html. If you never saw them before, impossible to know dead sure whether I or author ellipsed.
Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility.
We have never finished Hamlet, Marianne; our dear Willoughby went away before we could get through it. We will put it by, that when he comes again…But it may be months, perhaps, before THAT happens.
Virginia Wolf’s To the Lighthouse.
A fellowship, a professorship, he felt capable of anything and saw himself – but what was she looking at? At a man pasting a bill. The vast flapping sheet flattened itself out, and each shove of the brush revealed fresh legs, hoops, horses, glistening reds and blues, beautifully smooth, until half the wall was covered with the advertisement of a circus; a hundred horsemen, twenty performing seals, lions, tigers… Craning forwards, for she was short-sighted, she read it out… "will visit this town," she read.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
… I was standing beside his bed and he was sitting up between the sheets, clad in his underwear, with a great portfolio in his hands.
Dubliners, James Joyce
"Did he … peacefully?” she asked.
“Oh, quite peacefully, ma’am,” said Eliza. “You couldn’t tell when the breath went out of him. He had a beautiful death, God be praised.”
“And everything … ?”
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