Points of suspension

The points of suspension are used at the end of the sentence, in the place of the not. The points of suspension are represented by three points aligned horizontally on the level of the base line of writing: “…”.

Not to confuse with the Deux-points which are written vertically: “: ”.

Use

They have the same grammatical significance that the points, but mark the end of a statement whereas the sentence is grammatically not complete, that indicates to the reader that the preceding Phrase could have been continued. That can be:

  • a process rhetoric, leaving the end of the sentence in insinuation;
  • a ellipse;
  • a literary process allowing, in a dialog, to mark a hesitation, or somebody which cuts the word.

Case of use:

  • in a dialog;
    • when a sentence is cut by another interlocutor,
    • to represent the Hésitation,
    • to imply the pronunciation of Vulgarité S without writing it;
  • indication of presence of an insinuation in the sentence preceding them;
  • request of the imagination of the reader;
  • at the end of not-exhaustive lists (even use that etc - to note that “etc” having the same value as “…”, one never writes “etc… ”).

Printing works

Classically, the points of suspension are exactly printed like three points of at a stretch. In Data-processing, a single character represents the points of suspension in some character sets (for example Windows-1252 and Unicode). That makes it possible to post them together in a tighter way on only one character. Since the last versions, the Word processing Microsoft Word replaces “  automatically; …   ” by “  …   ”.

In HTML, the points of suspension are represented by the entity & hellip; .

In Latex, the points of suspension can be obtained by \ ldots. In the environment mathematics ($… $ or \ ), one can use the order \ ldots; one can also use median points of suspension as well as allignement vertical and diagonal ones, for example for matrices, with the orders \ cdots ( \ cdots), \ vdots ( \ vdots) and \ ddots ( \ ddots).

In mathematics

The points of suspension are used to reduce or shorten the notations. They can be written horizontally, vertically or obliquely (for example in matrices). They do not indicate an absence or a lack, but on the contrary an enumeration of objects entirely determined by the whole of the symbols which surround them. The informed reader is able without difficulty in including/understanding how to build, without risk of ambiguity, the elements put in ellipse, starting from their context.

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