Ellipsis, the space before, after, and in the middle of

The other day I looked on the WEB to find out if there is a space between the end of a word and the first dot of an ellipsis, because my word processor said there should not be a space. Bad mistake. I found nothing but a conflicting mess of misinformation.

The basic idea is the three dots of an ellipsis stand for one or more missing words usually in a quote. OK, so if it stands for a word and there is a space between words then there should be a space between the end of the last word and the first dot of an ellipsis. If an ellipsis represents a word then there should also be a space between the last dot of the three and the next word. English language is not logical so you can find arguments for both a space and not a space.

There are arguments that there are, or are not, spaces between the three dots in an ellipsis.

Then I found on the Grammar Girl site the statement that the four dot ellipsis does not exist. She must not have a Ph. D. The MLA manual that is used for academic papers, like Ph. D. thesis, says that if you do not use one or more sentences in a quote then you show that by using a four dot ellipsis. The four dots of the ellipsis represents a one or more missing sentences.

My advice. Use the whole quote or no quote.

Stay strong, write on. Professor Hyram Voltage