Re: [Groff] Correct protocol for making changes

[Gunnar Ritter]

Zvezdan Petkovic <address@hidden> wrote:

> On Fri, Feb 02, 2007 at 07:44:10PM +0100, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
> >   . The proper way to write an ellipsis is `.\|.\|.\&', optionally
> >     starting with `\&'.  Please don't omit the `\|' -- it looks quite
> >     ugly in PostScript output if the dots don't have enough horizontal
> >     separation.
>
> Doesn't it look typographically even better as `\|.\|.\|.\&'.
> I think this is what eqn sequence `. . .' gets translated into.

In general, this depends on language and style guide. For
example, the Chicago Manual of Style uses to put whole
spaces between the dots, and this indeed is common usage
in American books. In Germany, in contrast, this amount of
spacing is normally considered inappropriate, and something
like "\|" or even "\^" would be closer to standard style. 

There are also different rules for the space preceding the
ellipsis. The usual German rule is to add a (full) space if
the previous word was complete, and to add no space (or a
thin space) if the ellipsis indicates a missing part of a
word.

Then again, people who write GUI applications actually seem
to find it normal to write "Dialog..." in menus if the entry
always results in a new dialog window.

Finally, there are also different rules for punctuation
following an ellipsis. The standard German rule is not to
add a period behind an ellipsis before a sentence ends.
The CMS uses four periods with full spaces in between in
this case.

        Gunnar

p.s. While `. . .' has a special meaning in troff, it is
doubtful whether it should be used in emails or other text
files, see <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/quotes.html>.

p.p.s. German typewriter rules demand spaces between parts
of abbreviations, so it would be "p. p. s.". On the other
hand, it may be more correct to abbreviate these particular
words as "PPS" in German, without any periods.