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Ellipsis

The ellipsis (…) is a standard punctuation mark used in captioning and subtitling to indicate interrupted speech, a trailing thought, or a deliberate pause. Inserting it as a single Unicode character rather than as three consecutive periods is important for both visual consistency and format encoding compatibility.

Prerequisites​

  • A project is open with at least one Event Group.
  • The Quill editor is active and a cursor position is set within an event.
  • Insert menu → Ellipsis — inserts the … character at the current cursor position.

How ellipsis insertion works​

Selecting Ellipsis from the Insert menu inserts the Unicode horizontal ellipsis character (U+2026) at the current cursor position in the active editor. Like Full Block insertion, this operation requires the Quill editor to be focused with an active selection. The insertion is recorded in the undo history.

Why a Unicode ellipsis rather than three periods​

Three consecutive periods (...) and the Unicode ellipsis character (…) may appear visually similar in a standard text editor, but they behave differently in caption file encoding and decoding.

In SCC (Scenarist Closed Captions) and MCC (MacCaption) files, the character encoding table maps specific Unicode values to the byte sequences used in the binary format. The Unicode ellipsis character maps cleanly to the defined ellipsis byte in the EIA-608 and CEA-708 character tables, which ensures that the symbol decodes correctly on hardware and software decoders. Three separate period characters, by contrast, may consume additional character count per line and can produce subtle rendering differences depending on the decoder's character spacing rules.

For SRT and WebVTT formats the distinction is less critical, but using the single Unicode ellipsis character is still considered best practice for consistency and because it counts as one character rather than three, which is relevant when working against tight character-per-line limits.

Common usage​

The ellipsis is most frequently used at the end of an event to indicate that the speaker's sentence continues into the next event, and at the beginning of the following event to indicate continuation. Whether to use leading and trailing ellipses, or only a trailing one, depends on the style guide for your delivery — Netflix, for example, specifies that continuation ellipses should appear only at the end of the continuing event, not at the beginning of the next. Confirm the convention in your target specification before applying consistently.

Troubleshooting​

The ellipsis inserts but the character count increases by more than one​

This most likely means three period characters were inserted rather than the single Unicode ellipsis. Undo the insertion and use the Insert menu to re-insert the character correctly. Avoid typing three periods as a substitute.

The ellipsis does not appear after selecting the menu item​

Confirm that the Quill editor is focused and that a cursor position exists within an event. If no selection is active, the command will have no effect.

Source notes​

  • Components: src/components/toolbar/menus/InsertMenu.svelte