Ellipsis (Polish)

In Polish, an ellipsis (called _pl. "wielokropek", which means "multidot") is always composed of three dots without any spaces between. There is no space between the ellipsis and the preceding word, but there is always a space after the ellipsis, unless the following character is a closing bracket or quote mark, in which case the space is inserted after that character instead.

When the ellipsis is used for omitting a fragment of quotation, it is always surrounded with either square brackets or, more commonly, parentheses, with no space inside:

: _pl. „Słowem (...) chcemy stworzyć po raz wtóry człowieka, na obraz i podobieństwo manekinu.” (Bruno Schulz, _pl. "Traktat o manekinach")

These rules are standardized by PN-83/P-55366 standard from 1983, "Rules for setting texts in the Polish Language" ( _pl. "Zasady składania tekstów w języku polskim").

An ellipsis without parentheses usually means a pause in speech:

: _pl. Jest słoń z trąbami dwiema
I tylko... wysp tych nie ma.
(Jan Brzechwa, _pl. "Na wyspach Bergamutach...")

It can also mean a word said partially and interrupted and in that case can be directly followed by another punctuation mark without space:

: _pl. Szef policji pierś wysadza
I spod marsa sypiąc skry,
Prężnym krokiem się przechadza...
Co za gracja! Co za władza!
Co za pompa! Jezu Chry...!
(Julian Tuwim, _pl. "Bal w Operze")

Ellipsis can be used at the end of a sentence, but it is always composed of three dots, never four, and the only difference is the capitalisation of the next word:

: _pl. Ktoś dziś mnie opuścił w ten chmurny dzień słotny...
Kto? Nie wiem... Ktoś odszedł i jestem samotny...
Ktoś umarł... Kto? Próżno w pamięci swej grzebię...
Ktoś drogi... wszak byłem na jakimś pogrzebie...
(Leopold Staff, _pl. "Deszcz jesienny")

This rule applies when ellipsis is used with a question or exclamation mark:: ...?: ...!

External links

* [http://so.pwn.pl/zasady.php?id=629818 Rules of punctuation (in Polish)]