Ellipsis

Ellipsis is a fancy word meaning leaving out some of the words in a quotation. Students are reluctant to do this, and of course you don't want to change the sense of a passage by leaving out crucial words. But as I've suggested already, pruning a quotation is one of the best ways of strengthening a quotation's impact. Be careful, however: you must notify the reader of any changes, and naturally you cannot change the meaning of a passage in any material sense. If you leave out words within a quoted sentence, use ellipsis—three or four dots with spaces between and around them.

　　3-dot ellipsis

　　When you cut some of the words at the beginning of or within a quotation （but less than a full sentence）, use 3-dot ellipsis.

　　"Most of the world's Muslims today . . . are not Arabs and cannot read Arabic" （Lippman 58）.

　　Note that you put single spaces around the dots. A considerable number of academic readers care about such things, so be warned.

　　4-dot ellipsis

　　If the deleted portion of the quotation includes a sentence's terminal punctuation （the punctuation at the end of a sentence）, or if you are using the quotation to end a sentence in your essay, then you have to add a fourth dot, representing the period. If you leave out a sentence or more from a quoted passage, you must also use four-dot ellipsis. Make sure that what you do quote consists of grammatically complete sentences before and after the ellipsis:

　　Frederick Douglass bores into his listeners' hearts, insisting that no one can truly believe in the justice of slavery:"There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him. . . . At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed" （Douglass 34）.

　　Ann Hall perceives the difficulty in evaluating O'Neill's Anna Christie:"For feminist scholars, the conclusion for Anna is ambivalent at best. On the one hand, she is domesticated; she has relinquished all her ambition, and now stands behind 'her man' in order that he may attain his dreams. . . . On the other hand, Anna gains a certain degree of independence, ironically through her relationship with Andersen （174）."

　　Citations go at the end of the quotation, of course, and are inserted before the final dot of 4-dot ellipsis （except for set-off quotations—see above）. Here are several picky little ways to get ellipsis wrong （things like spaces in the wrong places）, and the way to get it right:

WRONG
RIGHT

"Punctuation standards have changed over time. . ." (Walters 178)

"Punctuation standards have changed over time..." (Walters 178).

"Punctuation standards have changed over time . . . ." (Walters 178)

"Punctuation standards have changed over time. . . ." (Walters 178)
"Punctuation standards have changed over time. . ." (Walters 178).

　　Just to complicate things, for set-off quotations the parenthetical is placed after the final dot, the period （see above）.

　　Finally, you don't always need to use ellipsis when you delete words. The reason for ellipsis is to notify your reader that there are words missing from the quotation. If this is already obvious from context, you don't need ellipsis:

WRONG
RIGHT

Walton oversaw". . . a massive overhaul of Wal-Mart's inventory system" (147).
Walton oversaw"a massive overhaul of Wal-Mart's inventory system" (147).