HELP! I'm stuck and I need your advice, PLEASE!

[SpeedyG]

Thank you, everyone; you were all a lot of help!

[Don]

Spaced out is the way to go!

Well . . . yeah. 

[Hugh]

Nothing wrong with using an ellipsis, surely.

But I thought it was ... (unspaced)  rather than . . . (spaced).

Gyppo

I think it depends if you are writing in English English or American. A British grammarian recommends that, to get it right, in MS Word press Ctrl + Alt + Full Stop. You'll see that it is unspaced.

Hugh

[Andrewf]

Ok, ignoring the ellipses or m-dash, I would also amend the second sentence in this example. So that the interruption reads as being more . . . interupting. 


"I think we should go ahead and rob the bank before . . . "

"No!" The other burglar interrupted. "We can't do this as my father is the night Security Guard there and I won't hurt him!"

[Zand]

Hey,

As far as I know the typical way to do it is with a dash


"I think we should go ahead and rob the bank before-"

"No!" The other burglar interrupted. "We can't. My father works as the Security Guard."

OT: I don't know whether this is just me being picky, but I'm not big on the "The other burglar interrupted", if it was me (And the character didn't have a name yet) I'd pick out something defining about them, such as red hair or a eyebrow piercing.

Flawless

[Hugh]

Em dash, en dash, ellipsis? No one has a definitive answer, so it is down to the preferred style of the publication or book publisher.

The only way to determine that is to research your market, which you should be doing anyway. Read your target magazine, or a book published under the imprint you are aiming at. You will soon find out whether they favour single or double quote marks, ellipses (spaced or not), em or en dashes, and all those little details of style preference that can make an editor think, here’s someone who has done their homework.

Anything that gives us the edge over the competition is worth that little bit of extra effort, IMO.

Hugh   

[Ken100]

I once employed a copy editor to edit a manuscript of mine, and he sent me a style sheet with the finished edit.
I've copied the relevant section below, scroll down to the bottom.

PUNCTUATION

ellipsis: 3 spaced full stops (non-breaking spaces between the stops)

parenthetical dash: spaced n-dash

quotation marks: double outer, single inner, conventional placement for dialogue; single outer for other uses

serial comma: no
   DATES AND NUMBERS

zero to ninety-nine; 100, . . . (but all numbers spelled out in dialogue)
ABBREVIATIONS

no full stop after contractions (Mr, Dr, St)
   PERMISSIONS
REFERENCE STYLE   CODES

[TS – . . .]  typesetting notes

• deliberate line space (between sections and between chapter heads and text)

ELECTRONIC FILE NAMES   MISCELLANEOUS

Ellipsis to indicate trailed off speech

m-dash to indicate broken off speech


Hope that helps.

[heidi52]

I saved that! Thanks Ken.

[Ken100]

I've attached the whole style sheet as a word doc for anyone interested. It is a style sheet very specific to my novel, and by a long way not a complete one, but I thought it might be interesting to some people. Also the formatting was off on the one I copied into the message.

[ma100]

I'm swiping that Ken.

[heidi52]

me too, thanks Ken! 

[Taylor]

I vote an em dash.

But while we're on elipsis's, I've read that if used at the end of a sentence you also add a period. So then you have four dots. Right or wrong?

You can use full stops with ellipsis if the ellipsis indicates the omission of whole sentences.

Take this passage, for example:

The woman pleaded with him. She promised him anything in return. Eventually he agreed.

You could state the first and last sentence only,

The woman pleaded with him. ...Eventually he agreed.

Here, the ellipsis is preceded by a fourth dot - the full stop, at the end of the first sentence, which, incidentally, has no space before it.

Or,

The woman pleaded ... . She promised him anything in return. Eventually he agreed.

Here, the space before the first dot indicates the first sentence is incomplete. The fourth dot is the full stop this time.

[Ken100]

I'm swiping that Ken.

me too, thanks Ken! 

Greedy lot!