The Secret Power of the Ellipsis: Why Those Three Dots Speak Louder Than Words
Omissions
The ellipsis is primarily used to indicate an omission. It can be an intentional omission, such as when you’re using a quotation but want to skip over a portion of it. Consider the following quote from Stephen King:
Fiction writers, present company included, don’t understand very much about what they do — not why it works when it’s good, not why it doesn’t when it’s bad.
If space is tight, you might want to omit part of the quotation, but you still need to indicate a missing piece of text. You would use an ellipsis:
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