Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

In the “et al” discussion, Martha mentioned spaces should be used as punctuation in the periods forming an ellipses (she referenced the Chicago Manual of Style). But I believe these spaces, in this context, aren't so much punctuation as they are just a practice of good typography.

This brings up an interesting question: Is a space really considered punctuation? Some publishing applications employ sophisticated spacing control to format bodies of text, such as Adobe InDesign and QuarkXPress, and have many different spaces to choose from (em space, en space, quarter, eighth, sixteenth, etc.).

So my argument is basically this: An ellipses is, itself, one element of punctuation. Its appearance in quality typesetting practices will generally have its three dots spread apart with some space between (I hate to call the dots ‘periods' because it infers more than one element of punctuation).

This is in contrast to the horrific U+2026 ellipses Microsoft Word “auto-corrects” when you type three periods. This elipses varies in appearance of its font, but I've seen it match the width of capital M in most cases.

Interested in any comments, hopefully from someone more authoritative than myself.

Thanks!