Rules for writers, Tenth edition - Diana Hacker, Nancy Sommers 2021

The ellipsis
Other punctuation marks
Punctuation

The ellipsis consists of three spaced periods. Use an ellipsis to indicate that you have deleted words from an otherwise word-for-word quotation.

Shute acknowledges that treatment for autism can be expensive: “Sensory integration therapy . . . can cost up to $200 an hour” (82).

If you delete a full sentence or more in the middle of a quoted passage, use a period before the ellipsis.

“If we don’t properly train, teach, or treat our growing prison population,” says longtime reform advocate Luis Rodríguez, “somebody else will. . . . This may well be the safety issue of the new century” (16).

NOTE: Ordinarily, do not use the ellipsis at the beginning or at the end of a quotation. Readers will understand that the quoted material is taken from a longer passage. If you have cut some words from the end of the final quoted sentence, however, MLA requires an ellipsis.

In quoted poetry, use a full line of ellipsis dots to indicate that you have dropped a line or more from the poem, as in this example from “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell:

Had we but world enough, and time,

This coyness, lady, were no crime.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

But at my back I always hear

Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near; (1—2, 21—22)