Ellipses Wikipedia:Manual of Style

mos:ellipsis
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to indicate omission of material quoted text, use ellipsis (plural ellipses): set of 3 unspaced dots: ... (the pre-composed ellipsis character (…), or 3 dots separated spaces (. . .), not recommended.)

use ellipsis if material omitted in course of quotation, unless square brackets used gloss quotation (see § brackets , parentheses, above, , points below).

put space on each side of ellipsis ( france, germany, ... , belgium ), except there should no space between ellipsis and

a quotation mark directly following ellipsis ( france, germany, , belgium ... ).
any (round, square, curly, etc.) bracket, ellipsis on inside ( france, germany (but not berlin, munich, ...), , belgium ).
any terminal punctuation, colon, semicolon, or comma, directly following ellipsis ( going france ...? ).


place terminal punctuation after ellipsis if textually important (as case exclamation marks , question marks , periods).
use non-breaking spaces ( ) needed prevent improper line breaks, example,

to keep quotation mark (and adjacent punctuation) being separated start or end of quotation ( ... we still worried ; going france ...? ).
to keep ellipsis wrapping next line ( france, germany, ... , belgium , not france, germany, ... and belgium ).






pause or suspension of speech
three dots used represent pause in or suspense of speech, in case punctuation retained in original form: virginia s startled reply he ...? no, cannot believe it! . avoid usage except in direct quotations. when indicates incomplete word, no space used between word fragment(s) , ellipsis: garbled transmission ended stranded near san l...o , interpreted reference either san leandro or san lorenzo.
with square brackets
an ellipsis not need square brackets around it, because function obvious. however, square brackets may optionally used precision, make clear ellipsis not quoted; necessary if quoted passage uses 3 periods in indicate pause or suspension. ellipsis should follow principles given above square brackets inserted before , after (her long rant continued: how feel? how think i ... look, has gone far enough! [...] want go home! ).