[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Notjohn

For a print edition, I use a space between the dots (full stops) in an ellipsis. But for the ebook I prefer to have them closed up.

Why?

If anything, it should be the opposite.

In print, you have full control over the font/spacing/justification/line-breaking.

In ebooks, the ellipsis character is very inconsistent. (Especially when dealing with the "4-dot ellipsis".)

For more info on all that, see:

• 2017: "break/no-break and other spaces"
  
  • I show period vs. ellipsis in different fonts.
• 2019: "ellipses, with or without spaces?"
• 2013: "[old thread] non breaking spaces (* and *) automatically removed"

Originally Posted by Turtle91

With regex I put the optional space in between, and replace with the actual ellipses character: …

search: (\s*\.\s*){2,}
replace: …

this will find any of these:
<p> ..</p>
<p>...</p>
<p>.. .. </p>
.
.
.
Of course you can add spaces before or after the ellipses as desired.

I have an 11-step ellipsis "Saved Searches" I came up with years ago:

Step | Search          | Replace
_____|_________________|____________
1    | …               | ...
2    | \.\.\.\.        | . . . .
3    | \.\.\.          | . . .
4    | \.\. \.         | . . .
5    | \. \.\.         | . . .
6    | “\. \. \.\s*    | “. . . 
7    | \s*\. \. \.”    | . . .”
8    | <p>\. \. \.\s+  | <p>.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;
9    | \s+\. \. \.</p> | &nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.</p>
10   | \. \. \. \.     | .&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.
11   | \. \. \.        | .&nbsp;.&nbsp;.

Steps 1->5. Looks for various combinations of periods/spaces and normalizes everything into "period + space + period" form.

6+7. Attaches ellipsis + open/closing quotation marks.

8+9. Attaches ellipsis + beginning-/end-of-paragraph.

10. Find 4-dot ellipsis.

11. Find any 3-dot ellipsis that hasn't been touched yet.

* * *

Usage Notes

Steps 1->5

I've learned you can't trust any user input.

Authors accidentally use combinations of "..." + "…" within the same text.

And too many times OCR, AutoCorrect, or these "Smart Punctuation" algorithms botch the ellipsis character.

This helps normalize everything.

Steps 6->9

Depend on a manual decision.

Some authors prefer a space before/after, others prefer the ellipsis with no space.

• “… Okay.” vs. “…Okay.”
• “Okay …” vs. “Okay…”

Steps 10+11

Definitely requires case-by-case decisionmaking.

Over the years, Jellby has written extensively on all the various combinations of ellipses that can occur (there's at least 5):

• .… vs. ….
  
  • Period + Ellipsis vs. Ellipsis + Period?
• “Okay… I just wanted you to go away.”
  
  • A long pause, or dialogue drifting off.
• Much as the Arctic tern migrates yearly from the Arctic to the Antarctic?… The epidemics could have origins of two sorts, one from beyond the equator, another from nearer home.
  
  • Other Punctuation + Ellipsis.
• As the journalist wrote: “The brawl expanded into … terror and mayhem.”
  
  • Removed text in the middle of a long quote.
• As the journalist wrote: “The brawl expanded into […] terror and mayhem.”
  
  • A more European-style of removed text.
    
  • (I absolutely love this, and it makes much more sense. )
    

You can't just do a mass search/replace.

You have to decide if/where you're going to use the ellipsis character + if/where it should get attached.

Side Note: After this, you'd probably want to also look for two periods in a row:

• \. \.
• \.\.

This is an example..

(This is a very common typo. It even snuck into the latest book I converted.)

If your book is full of links like:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../Styles/stylesheet.css"/>

you may want to adjust those regexes slightly:

• \w\. \.
• \w\.\.

Hopefully that'll catch them all.

And again, a case-by-case basis. The author may have meant just a period, or they may have meant an actual ellipsis.