Ellipsing

Ellipsing is the practice of using or creating an ellipsis to indicate omission, a pause, or a shortened span of time in language, media, or user interfaces. The term derives from the Greek word for “omission” (ellipsis) and the gerund form ellipsing.

In writing and typography, ellipsing refers to inserting an ellipsis (three dots or a single character) to show that material has been omitted, to convey trailing off, or to create a deliberate pause. Style guides differ on punctuation, spacing, and whether to replace the ending with an ellipsis in dialogue or narrative. In computing and digital text, ellipsing (or ellipsizing) describes truncating a string to fit available space and appending an ellipsis, a common technique in user interfaces, menus, and labels.

In narrative arts such as film, television, and fiction, ellipsing denotes the deliberate skipping over intervening events so that time seems to pass without showing every moment. Elliptical editing in cinema compresses timelines and focuses attention on pivotal moments, while in fiction the technique can create pacing, ambiguity, or emphasis by leaving gaps for the reader’s imagination.

In linguistics and discourse, ellipsis (the noun) refers to the omission of syntactic material that is recoverable from context, such as a sentence fragment that implies a missing clause. Ellipsing as a verb or noun form is used informally to describe the act of performing or applying such omissions.

See also: ellipsis, ellipsize.