The ellipsis, rendered ..., alternatively described as suspension points/dots, points/periods of ellipsis, or ellipsis points, or colloquially, dot-dot-dot, is a punctuation mark consisting of a series of three dots. An ellipsis can be used in many ways, such as for intentional omission of text or numbers, to imply a concept without using words. Style guides differ on how to render an ellipsis in printed material.
Punctuation marks are marks indicating how a piece of written text should be read and, consequently, understood. The oldest known examples of punctuation marks were found in the Mesha Stele from the 9th century BC, consisting of points between the words and horizontal strokes between sections. The alphabet-based writing began with no spaces, no capitalization, no vowels, and with only a few punctuation marks, as it was mostly aimed at recording business transactions. Only with the Greek playwrights did the ends of sentences begin to be marked to help actors know when to make a pause during performances. Punctuation includes space between words and both obsolete and modern signs.
In typography, the pilcrow (¶) is a glyph used to identify a paragraph. In editorial production the pilcrow typographic character may also be known as the paragraph mark, the paragraph sign, the paragraph symbol, the paraph, and the blind P.
The Chicago Manual of Style is a style guide for American English published since 1906 by the University of Chicago Press. Its 18 editions have prescribed writing and citation styles widely used in publishing.
House of Leaves is the debut novel by American author Mark Z. Danielewski, published in March 2000 by Pantheon Books. A bestseller, it has been translated into a number of languages, and is followed by a companion piece, The Whalestoe Letters.
A citation is a reference to a source. More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression embedded in the body of an intellectual work that denotes an entry in the bibliographic references section of the work for the purpose of acknowledging the relevance of the works of others to the topic of discussion at the spot where the citation appears.
In writing, a space is a blank area that separates words, sentences, syllables and other written or printed glyphs (characters). Conventions for spacing vary among languages, and in some languages the spacing rules are complex. Inter-word spaces ease the reader's task of identifying words, and avoid outright ambiguities such as "now here" vs. "nowhere". They also provide convenient guides for where a human or program may start new lines.
Ibid. is an abbreviation for the Latin word ibīdem, meaning 'in the same place', commonly used in an endnote, footnote, bibliography citation, or scholarly reference to refer to the source cited in the preceding note or list item. This is similar to idem, literally meaning 'the same', abbreviated id., which is commonly used in legal citation.
A paragraph is a self-contained unit of discourse in writing dealing with a particular point or idea. Though not required by the orthographic conventions of any language with a writing system, paragraphs are a conventional means of organizing extended segments of prose.
Copy editing is the process of revising written material ("copy") to improve quality and readability, as well as ensuring that a text is free of errors in grammar, style and accuracy. The Chicago Manual of Style states that manuscript editing encompasses "simple mechanical corrections through sentence-level interventions to substantial remedial work on literary style and clarity, disorganized passages, baggy prose, muddled tables and figures, and the like ". In the context of print publication, copy editing is done before typesetting and again before proofreading. Outside traditional book and journal publishing, the term "copy editing" is used more broadly, and is sometimes referred to as proofreading; the term sometimes encompasses additional tasks.
Nota bene is the Latin phrase meaning note well. In manuscripts, nota bene is abbreviated in upper-case as NB and N.B., and in lower-case as n.b. and nb; the editorial usages of nota bene and notate bene first appeared in the English style of writing around the year 1711. In Modern English, since the 14th century, the editorial usage of NB is common to the legal style of writing of documents to direct the reader's attention to a thematically relevant aspect of the subject that qualifies the matter being litigated, whereas in academic writing, the editorial abbreviation n.b. is a casual synonym for footnote.
Parenthetical referencing is a citation system in which in-text citations are made using parentheses. They are usually accompanied by a full, alphabetized list of citations in an end section, usually titled "references", "reference list", "works cited", or "end-text citations". Parenthetical referencing can be used in lieu of footnote citations.
Fiction writing is the composition of non-factual prose texts. Fictional writing often is produced as a story meant to entertain or convey an author's point of view. The result of this may be a short story, novel, novella, screenplay, or drama, which are all types of fictional writing styles. Different types of authors practice fictional writing, including novelists, playwrights, short story writers, radio dramatists and screenwriters.
Sentence spacing concerns how spaces are inserted between sentences in typeset text and is a matter of typographical convention. Since the introduction of movable-type printing in Europe, various sentence spacing conventions have been used in languages with a Latin alphabet. These include a normal word space, a single enlarged space, and two full spaces.
The manicule, ☛, is a typographic mark with the appearance of a hand with its index finger extending in a pointing gesture. Originally used for handwritten marginal notes, it later came to be used in printed works to draw the reader's attention to important text. Though once widespread, it is rarely used today, except as an occasional archaic novelty or on informal directional signs.
A subscript or superscript is a character that is set slightly below or above the normal line of type, respectively. It is usually smaller than the rest of the text. Subscripts appear at or below the baseline, while superscripts are above. Subscripts and superscripts are perhaps most often used in formulas, mathematical expressions, and specifications of chemical compounds and isotopes, but have many other uses as well.
A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations is a style guide for writing and formatting research papers, theses, and dissertations and is published by the University of Chicago Press.
The encyclopedic novel is a genre of complex literary fiction which incorporates elements across a wide range of scientific, academic, and literary subjects. The concept was coined by Edward Mendelson in criticism of Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, defined as an encyclopedia-like attempt to "render the full range of knowledge and beliefs of a national culture, while identifying the ideological perspectives from which that culture shapes and interprets its knowledge". In more general terms, the encyclopedic novel is a long, complex work of fiction that incorporates extensive information, often from specialized disciplines of science and the humanities. Mendelson's essays examine the encyclopedic tendency in the history of literature, considering the Divine Comedy, Don Quixote, Faust, and Moby-Dick, with an emphasis on the modern Ulysses and Gravity's Rainbow. Commonly cited examples of encyclopedic novels in the postmodern period include, in addition to Pynchon, Richard Powers' The Gold Bug Variations (1991), David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest (1996), and Don DeLillo's Underworld (1997). Other literary critics have explored the concept since, attempting to understand the function and effect of "encyclopedic" narratives, and coining the related terms systems novel and maximalist novel.
In typography, a dinkus is a typographic symbol which often consists of three spaced asterisks or bullets in a horizontal row, i.e. ∗ ∗ ∗ or • • • . The symbol has a variety of uses, and it usually denotes an intentional omission or a logical "break" of varying degree in a written work. This latter use is similar to a subsection, and it indicates to the reader that the subsequent text should be re-contextualized. When used this way, the dinkus typically appears centrally aligned on a line of its own with vertical spacing before and after the symbol. The dinkus has been in use in various forms since c. 1850. Historically, the dinkus was often represented as an asterism, ⁂, though this use has fallen out of favor and is now nearly obsolete.
The reference mark or reference symbol "※" is a typographic mark or word used in Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) writing.
