Glyph, Ellipsis, Brackets and Square Bracket Rules

A nice uncluttered workstation for an editor?

The following is a guide I formulated to keep my own thinking straight. 

• A glyph is a symbol used for a meaning not complete in itself.

An ellipsis is a sign or glyph such as [‘ … ’] used in printed text indicating:

1:         The omission of one or more words that are understood in the context, but that would need to be supplied to make a construction grammatically complete;

2:         A sudden leap from one topic to another;

3:         That words have been left out;

4:         Particularly in informal writing, a pause in dialogue or narrative, or a character or narrator trailing off.

SPECIFIC ELLIPSES, BRACKETS AND SQUARE BRACKETS RULES WITH A DASH OF DASHES

These are the rules which I have drawn up as making sense to me, and which I apply as far as possible:

1. Use the ellipsis glyph rather than three dots to avoid having it split at the end of a line (Word does overcome this, but some programmes may not).
2. The default should be a space before and a space after … thus. I consider this preferable to the frequently used system of having no space… after the preceding word, regardless of whether that word is complete or not.
3. For incomplete words, no space tailing off or leading in. ‘Exa…’ ‘…mple.’
4. Never leave a space between the ellipse glyph and preceding or following punctuation: …! (Except in this case on the preceding : !)
   “This shows …’    ‘… how it should be done.’         and
   ‘This shows … ’  ‘ … how it shouldn’t.’
5. Use dashes rather than ellipses to indicate – briefly – shorter breaks or insertions.
6. An insertion completely breaking the flow (this flow is broken here with a wording which would be disjointed if one replaced the brackets with commas) is better with brackets.
7. Sections left out should be indicated with square brackets enclosing the ellipsis glyph […]. There is a trend to leave the square brackets out. This trend needs to be reversed.
8. Editorial insertions should have square brackets. [Better to distinguish them thus!]
9. To indicate a longer break use dots evenly separated by spaces . . . like this. Beware of this running beyond the end of a line.
10. Be consistent in using a full stop after ellipses, where applicable, or not doing so. Purists insist on four dots if a new sentence begins beyond the ellipsis, the last one to show the sentence has ended even if incomplete. My personal feeling, which I apply in writing and encourage when editing, is that a tailing off sentence never does end, and that the ellipsis glyph replaces the full stop.
11. However, if the ellipsis ends an incomplete quote, but appears at a place where the sentence within the quote ended, ‘then the fourth point is appropriate ….’ but is clearer if separated by a space, which logically should appear thus. …’

© Colonialist May 2015 (WordPress)