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List:       kde-i18n-doc
Subject:    Periods following ellipses (was Re: request for context)
From:       Andrew Coles <andrew_coles () yahoo ! co ! uk>
Date:       2009-03-31 22:13:45
Message-ID: 693127.89856.qm () web25908 ! mail ! ukl ! yahoo ! com
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> > Actually, that's correct, don't change it. 
> Sentences should finish with
> > periods, even if they have an ellipsis (three period
> marks) just before
> > them.
> 
> [citation needed]
> If that is the case, that is the first time I see it.

Sure, have a look at the home of 'citation needed' ;) :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipsis

'The Chicago Manual of Style suggests ... [an] ellipsis at the end of a sentence with \
no sentence following should be followed by a full stop (for a total of four dots).'

> In
> any case:
> 
> 1) grepping for "\.\.\." in the current stable message
> templates gave me 2397 
> matches,

Not quite a fair test, though - that will be including all the times where it's quite \
correct to write just the three dots.  I'm happy to audit KDE ellipsis usage to \
follow the Chicago MoS guidelines, but then I might pee off a few translation teams \
along the way....

> for "\.\.\.\." only 1, in Kalzium. Something's
> amiss here.

I proof-read Kalzium a while back, so there's a chance that was me.

> 2) "Sending", in the original message, is one of those
> short messages in the 
> status bar that, when without an ellipsis, do not have a
> full stop anyway.

That's a matter of taste.  Given Sending is, necessarily, an action that hasn't \
finished yet, then an ellipsis as an aposiopetic device is entirely reasonable.  A \
progression of messages might be displayed in succession, for instance:

Status: Connecting....
Status: Sending....
Status: Finished.

Andrew


      


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