Ellipsis–to space or not to space?

I have been blogging a long time now, probably close to seventeen years. One problem continues to plague me: how best to punctuate an ellipsis. Back in high school and college I was taught that an ellipsis consisted of three periods, with a space both before and after each. It’s principal use is to indicate the omission of words or sentences in a quotation. For example, if one or more words are omitted within a sentence, it looks like this:

The directions . . . are unnecessarily complicated.

If one or more complete sentences are omitted, the ellipsis immediately follows the terminal period. For example:

And yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. . . . Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it.

But longtime readers will have observed that this is not how I construct an ellipsis on my blog. The reason is simple: in HTML (the language used by blogging programs) two or more periods with a space in-between can be broken into different lines, depending on the browser. (HTML does provide a special code for a non-breaking space, but that’s just a hassle. Fellow bloggers will understand.) Not only does the break in the ellipsis confuse, but it looks ugly. The only way to keep three periods together is to eliminate the spaces. For example:

The directions … are unnecessarily complicated.

And yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts…. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it.

I confess that I find the above two examples aesthetically inelegant, especially the second. I prefer the old-fashioned ellipsis. What can I say? I’m a dinosaur. I grew up in the age of typewriters. (I still have my mother’s old Royal.) In any case HTML does not allow me to have my druthers, so I am forced to use three connecting periods.

Writers, newspapers, and publishing houses are now experimenting with the ellipsis. If you scour the internet, you will also find the following usages:

The directions…are unnecessarily complicated.

The directions… are unnecessarily complicated.

And yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. … Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it.

And yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts… Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it.

Personally, I don’t like any of these newfangled ellipsis constructions. HTML has forced me to adapt, but at some point one just has to say NO. In the words of Jean-Luc Picard: “The Line Must Be Drawn Here!”

On second thought, maybe I’ll start using the non-breaking space . . . despite the hassle of having to memorize the special code . . . and strike a blow for God-given tradition.

(On the history of the ellipsis punctuation mark, see this short article.)