Guide to Ellipses

If you omit part of a quoted section you should be careful that the omission does not change the author’s intended meaning and that the sentence containing the quotation is grammatically correct. The ellipsis – three periods separated by spaces – shows that you have left out part of the section from which you are quoting. The following is a list of how to handle quotations that omit part of the original source:

1.  When you quote merely one word or phrase, you do not need an ellipsis because you have obviously not quoted the entire sentence.

Example: According to Harvard professor Daniel Boorstin, “television has democratized experience.”

2.  When you leave out the beginning of a sentence from your source, you often still have a section that could be a sentence on its own. In this case, you need an ellipsis only if capitalization clues do not make the omission obvious.

A.  If you integrate the quoted section into a sentence of your own, the fact that the first letter of the quotation is not capitalized makes the omission obvious.

Example: A noted psychologist believes that “most people are more concerned about receiving love than giving it.”

B.  If you begin a new sentence with the quotation, the omission is obvious because you need to use brackets to insert a capital letter.

Example: “[I]t has been regarded as essentially trivial,” Stone asserts in The American Short Story.

C.  If the first word of the sentence section  that you quote happens to be a proper noun, you need an ellipsis.

Example: “. . . Dickens’ character was that it was at once tremulous and yet hard and sharp,” wrote G.K. Chesterton in his biography of Charles Dickens.

3.  If you omit words in the middle of a sentence, you need an ellipsis.

Example: DuPlessis-Mornay believed, as Calvin did, that “individuals . . . perform no magistracy, have no dominion and no power of punishment.”

4.  If you omit the end of a sentence, you need four periods (i.e., the sentence period followed by the ellipsis). However, if you are using a parenthetical reference, move the sentence period outside the quotation and place it after the reference.

Example 1: The 1935-36 edition of the St. John’s University Catalog says that “college youths of today are to be the leaders of tomorrow. . . .”

Example 2: The 1935-36 edition of the St. John’s University Catalog says that “college youths of today are to be the leaders of tomorrow . . .” (49).

5.  If you omit the end of a sentence as in section four above and then go on to quote one or more sentences, use four periods separated by spaces (and leave two spaces after the last period). Use this same format when you quote a full sentence, leave out a sentence or more, and then quote another sentence. The format also applies when you leave out both the end of a sentence and one or more full sentences.

Example: G.K. Chesterton wrote the following about Charles Dickens: “[T]he essence of Dickens’ character was that it was at once tremulous and yet hard and sharp. . . . He vibrated at every touch and yet was indestructible; you could bend him but you could not break him.”