Answer: What is the correct punctuation for speech that "trails off"?

[theemdash]

with examples from Stargate: SG-1, Stargate: Atlantis, and Fullmetal Alchemist

velocitygrass asks: What is the correct punctuation for speech that "trails off"? What is the punctuation for interruption (either by yourself or someone else)?Many people will tell you that trailing-off punctuation is largely a result of stylistic choices. Personally, I disagree

Comments

[melayneseahawk]

Can honestly say this was something I'd never really thought about, so it's awesome to have this laid out for me. :D

[theemdash]

I think the grammar thing I get geekiest about is punctuation. Specifically em dashes, but punctuation in general gets me pretty excited. I mean, one misplaced comma and can you wind up with something entirely different (and often hilarious).

[melayneseahawk]

Indeed.

[lonelybrit]

Yep, I was taught a slightly different style of ellipse, but even so it's good to see how you're meant to deal with things like question marks and periods. I've recently started being aware of the en dash, so thank you for the clear explanation of how they can be used. When reading it does make a world of difference to the pace of dialogue if the writer knows how to use both :)

[theemdash]

Question marks and periods with ellipses can be confusing because they don't look consistent, so knowing the correct way to punctuate for one doesn't mean you know the correct way to punctuate for both.

[aurora_novarum]

Oh yes! See, I've always thought the period was after the ellipses because they've just all looked like dots to me, and the question mark and exclamation point were at the end.

*must pay attention to spaces*

[aurora_novarum]

What I hate is when my word processor makes an emdash, but then it doesn't translate into html, so it looks like an endash and--that really has nothing to do with this, does it?

As often as I use (and abuse) emdashes and ellipses, I will definitely try and take this to heart. I know think sometimes I overuse the latter. I'd also not heard the spaces between ellipses before.

Very cool essay! (And P.S. How appropriate that you're the one writing it theemdash!)

[theemdash]

I use Word and changed my settings so that it wouldn't automatically replace two hyphens with an em dash. (Of course I also fixed it to give me straight quotes rather than smart quotes because on my machine, everything is for the good of the internet.)

I prefer the spaces between the dots in an ellipsis in part because I'm an editor and that's the style of my publishing house, but also because it illustrates the pause more completely. With the dots smashed together, you can almost glance right over them.

"I'm Daniel, it means, uh... 'God is my judge'."

"I'm Daniel, it means, uh . . . 'God is my judge'."

I especially prefer it online because sometimes online fonts will have tight spacing between the letters.

(And P.S. How appropriate that you're the one writing it theemdash!)

Are you kidding? As soon as I saw this question come up, I grabbed it. I love em dashes!

[starwatcher307]

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I'm 2 1/2 years late, but it seems pertinent. You like space within the ellipsis because it spreads it out and is more easily noticed.

But I prefer the ellipsis with no internal space because, if there are spaces, the ellipsis will sometimes begin at the right side of the page, and continue on the next line at the left side of the page. And you can't control it; it depends entirely on the reader's browser and window-size.

I've seen ellipses spaced and not spaced; are no-space ellipses at least permissible? Otherwise, I'll be breaking rules all over the place. This doesn't mean I'll change, but at least I'll know what to advise people when I beta their stories.
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[velocitygrass]

Thank you very much!

It's good to know that I can keep the ellipses (although I'll stick with the non-spaced ones) and I'll make sure to add an additional period when they end the sentence in the future.

When trying to research this on my own, I came across the em dash, but it looked scarily large to me and now I just checked and it seems Times New Roman as well as Arial really have an em dash that's too long (Arial 25% and Times New Roman 40%!). *curses Windows standard fonts*

In Verdana they look fine however, even if I'll have to get used to the lack of space afterwards.

Again, thank you for clearing this up for me!

[theemdash]

I'm glad this helped!

For the non-spaced ellipsis, you should run them up against the terminating letter of the word, but put a space after the ellipsis. Like... this. (Typing that was quite difficult for me, I'll have you know). I posted my reasoning for the spaced ellipsis above. I admit, in my heart of hearts, I'm campaigning for usage of the spaced ellipsis online to aid reading. ;)

The "m" length is an approximation, but basically as long as your em dash is longer than an en dash, it's understandable.
- vs. - (em dash vs. en dash)

[velocitygrass]

I read your reasoning and maybe the explanation for me is that I write in a fixed-width text editor where . . . is just a loooot of space. It just hurts my eyes ;)

Although now I have to ask: If I don't use spaces, is there no space at all if the sentence trails off and a new one begins?

"I didn't know that I.... I mean, since I left her, I've thought about it all the time."

or

"I didn't know that I... . I mean, since I left her, I've thought about it all the time."

Okay, the second one looks strange to me. I think generally a space before a period looks strange to me.

The "m" length is an approximation, but basically as long as your em dash is longer than an en dash, it's understandable.
Yes in terms of differentiation it doesn't matter to be precisely of that length. But I think it does make a difference visually. I'm somewhat picky in terms of aesthetics (at least in some cases). And the humongous - in Times New Roman makes me uncomfortable. Look at this comparison between Georgia and Times New Roman on your first example:

[theemdash]

If you don't use spaces, it should look like this:

"I didn't know that I.... I mean, since I left her, I've thought about it all the time."

If we weren't on the internet, a printer would probably use a slight space between the dots in the ellipsis (making it look sort of like this: "I didn't know that I. ... I mean, since I left her, I've thought about it all the time."), but for internet purposes, absolutely no spaces is all right.

What's funny is that I think the em dash in Georgia looks too short. Heh. I greatly prefer the look of it in Times New Roman. (Though I possible see it more often in Times New Roman which is what that looks fine to me.)

[seanchaidh]

One issue I find rather frustrating is how the em dash doesn't translate well to HTML. (And now you have me wanting to go back to my stories after those ellipses.:))

[theemdash]

I agree. I wish em dashes were more easily printable in HTML.

(I cannot tell you how many times I've learned something new, realized I made mistakes in about a hundred places, and gone to fix as many as possible. If you attempt it, I wish you the best of luck.)