Editors' Congress Urges Journalists to Revisit the Ellipse

In a bid to "improve the quality, integrity, and value of journalism," the North American Congress of Journalistic Editors, at its annual meeting today in Washington D.C., has issued a set of recommendations for its members. Among them: increase use of the ellipse, a punctuation mark consisting of a line of three dots written "..." (without the quotation marks).

The ellipse is used as a placeholder for an omitted word or phrase, or to indicate a pause in conversation. A staple of academic writing, the punctuation mark is often omitted in newspaper and magazine writing to make the text more reader-friendly. Journalistic editors and writers often create alternative phrasings when a lengthy phrase is omitted from a sourced statement, interrupting the exact wording with description or simply ending a statement prematurely with a full-stop "period" mark ("."). Such uses give little indication anything has been omitted, and can lead to misunderstandings.

The recommendation explains, "it is a staple of journalistic integrity to publish an accurate account of statements by sources or other quoted material. When a word or phrase is omitted or rearranged for brevity, a reader may rightly wonder whether important meanings have been altered or decontextualized by this process." The recommendation continues, "Returning to the practice of using the ellipse ("...") informs the reader that a redaction has occurred. Use of such signposts is likely to help prevent willful or accidental misconstrual of a source's meaning, which is, of course, the journalist's and editor's responsibility to represent as faithfully as possible."