# Ellipses

In general, don't use ellipses. An ellipsis is made up of
three contiguous periods. Ellipses indicate the omission of part of a sentence, paragraph, or larger
block of text where the omission is not pertinent to the understanding of the subject at
hand.

## Ellipses as suspension points

When ellipses are used to indicate hesitation, they are called *suspension points*. Don't use ellipses this way in our documentation.

Not recommended: The answer is ... wait
for it ... that you shouldn't do this.

## Ellipses in a user interface

When ellipses appear in a user interface, exclude them from the
documentation describing the user interface unless their omission could cause
confusion. For example, if the text on the button in the UI reads **Save ...** ,
document it as *click **Save***.

## Ellipses in text

Don't use ellipses in your written documentation; omit any unnecessary
information and include all necessary information.

However, it's acceptable to use ellipses in quoted text (to replace a
portion of the quoted text) except when they appear at the beginning or end of
the text.

Not recommended: My high school English
teacher made me learn that Shakespeare quote about all the world being a stage
and " ... all the men and women merely players."

Not recommended: My high school English
teacher made me learn that Shakespeare quote: "All the world's a stage, And all
the men and women merely players ...."

The previous example ended with four ellipsis points. The final
ellipsis point is, in fact, a period. So when the material that you're omitting
contains one or more sentence boundaries, use four dots instead of three.

Recommended: My high school English
teacher made me learn that Shakespeare quote: "All the world's a stage, ....
And one man in his time plays many parts."

## Punctuation and spacing of ellipses

Keep all three ellipsis points together. When creating an ellipsis,
instead of the ellipsis character, use three periods in a row. Insert one space
before and after the ellipsis unless a punctuation mark immediately follows the
ellipsis; in this case, don't insert a space after the ellipsis.

Recommended: You don't need to
understand all the other Python code in there ... we'll explain it all in class.

Also recommended: You don't need to
understand all the other Python code in there ...; we'll explain it all in class.

Not recommended: You don't need to
understand all the other Python code in there...we'll explain it all in class.