FYI: It is acceptable punctuation to place an apostrophe in place of
any missing letters or words from a sentence that would be grammatically incomplete otherwise. To whit:
'Been there. (Acceptable shortened version of "I have been there.")
As for ellipses, you've got it wrong!
If you want to add the "dramatic pause" associated with ellipses - not the "and so on" version - you use three stops, like this "..." ... UNLESS IT ENDS A SENTENCE! In that case you use FOUR stops, in addition to any terminating punctuation!...
<=== See?!If I typed five somewhere I was just being over enthusiastic, is all!
Oh, and, of course, all punctuation should ALWAYS go INSIDE closing terminators, such as quotation marks, too! (Although I've been bucking the trend on this in cases where it creates literally-incorrect content within the quotes. ['Told you I buck the "status quo" of language!] E.g. At the end of the line type "format". )
The problem with the above is that as currently-defined, written English is ambiguous in these areas because literal correctness wasn't of much value. Now however, it can mean the difference between correct and NOT, so I'm fighting them on this one!
Thanks for making me come and rant here, tho, JD!
