Re: Ellipses

["Michael West" <mbwest -at- bigpond -dot- com>]

Dick Margulis wrote:

> Personally I think the ellipsis looks better with a space on either
> side of it rather than tight up against a word--and this works better
> in MS Office apps, because it doesn't mess up line breaks. As to
> whether to put a space between the ellipsis and preceding or
> following punctuation, that depends on the font. What you want to end
> up with is, as nearly as possible, the same space between the
> individual points as between the ellipsis and adjacent punctuation.
> So, if the ellipsis is at the end of the sentence, the old way was .
> . . . (four spaced points, three for the ellipsis and one for the
> terminal period). But with the single-glyph ellipsis, in some fonts
> you would want to set it solid.

For those who like to fiddle with these things in Word,
remember that you can create your "perfect ellipsis" (or
dash, or whatever) and then store it as an auto-text item,
or a toolbar button. Then you don't have to go through all
the motions each time you use it.

I don't know when Word added the 1/4-em space to its
Special Characters menu, but it's in WinWord 2k, and it
means we've got em-, en- and thin-spaces to play with.
Another fine-tuning strategy is to insert a regular
space and then tweak the font size.

You can get pretty close to real page composition in Word,
if you've the inclination. There's nothing wrong with producing
great-looking pages for your clear, accurate, complete, user-
assistance material. But watch out for the "anti-font-fondler"
police -- like the Knights Who Say Ni, they may be watching. Be
prepared to give them a shrubbery. A nice one, but not too
expensive.
-- 
Michael West