Boomerdad, you're right about what elipses are -- but usually what appears in your examples would be an em-dash. Are the dots in the book itself, i.e., do you have a sighted person around who can check the book? I'm validating a "Fair" book now which has dots but the book itself as the em-dash. (I'm sighted and can look at the book), so I'm correcting it. The file I'm working with is a txt file rather than an rtf file; I don't know if the conversion to txt is what caused what might have been em-dashes originally to become the 3 dots of which you speak or not. But in the context of the example you give, I'd say dashes are more common and moe correct than the dots, though stylistically an author or publisher might choose differently. If you want and I can get the book, maybe I can check some pages for you where the dots appear and let you know what they're supposed to be. Cindy --- boomerdad <boomerdad@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Okay, I don't know if they're called elipses or > not--elipses may be referring to journalistic dots > to signify words being removed from quoted text or > dialogue. What I'm talking about is in fiction, > when there are dots in the narrative. I ask one of > you sighted folk here to help me settle an issue > once and for all that's been bugging me for quite > some time. Here's a fake paragraph illustrating > what I'm talking about: > > John walked into the bar ... > > ... and found himself staring into the eyes of his > beloved. > > "John..." she breathed. > > "Susan...?" he responded. > > "... You're ... looking well," she stammered. > > > Anyway, you get the idea. I'm overusing them, just > to make sure there's no doubt about what I'm > referring to. > > My question is this: I don't know how to fix these > dots. Many times, instead of being clumped together > there are spaces between them. (instead of "..." > you get ". . ."). Sometimes, when someone is > speaking, there's a space between the last word of > dialogue ("John..." instead of "John ..."), and when > the dots occur at the beginning or end of a > narrative paragraph, I never know whether to put > spaces between the last word and the dots or not, > or, as the case may be, the first word of the new > paragraph and its dots. OCR isn't consistent as to > how to deal with this, and I'd just like to know how > to fix them when they're wrongly recognized. Yes, > it's petty, and doesn't interfere with legibility > ... but I'm a perfectionist in my own editing, and > would like to know this for my own writing as well; > I may not be putting spaces where there should be > spaces and such. What's the "right" way to use > these? How's it done in print books? Thanks. > > > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com