If one or more paragraphs, or if, in poetry, one or more lines, are omitted, a full line of periods or stars is used.
A dash or stars are used in the place of letters omitted from a word, and the dash in place of figures omitted from a number of figures. Stars were formerly much used for omitted letters.
Examples will illustrate the punctuation under consideration. Our first example is taken from the current issue of a well-known weekly periodical:
103. Who commissioned them, a minority, a less than minority ...?... Some of them are misguided, some of them are blind, most of them are ignorant. I would rather pray for them.... They do not tell me what they are attempting.
How shall we interpret the marks indicating the three ellipses in the above sentence?
The first three periods stand for words omitted from the end of an interrogative sentence, whose end-mark follows such periods.
The second group of three periods indicates an ellipsis of one or more entire sentences. If they indicated an ellipsis of only a part of the next sentence, “Some” would not begin with a capital.
The next group of four periods is composed of three periods for the ellipsis and one period for the end-mark of the sentence.
It should be noted that ellipses from quotations are of only such matter as can be omitted without affecting the sense of the language quoted.
Marks of quotation will include the marks of ellipsis that begin or end the quoted matter.