Not long ago I noticed that one of the special automatic format protocols that WordPress utilizes has something to do with ellipsis, the series of marks which indicate an omission or pause. (The term derives ultimately from the Greek elleipein, meaning to “leave out, fall short.” It’s the same etymological root responsible for the geometric figure named an ellipse, but the rationale for that one isn’t clear to me at the moment.)
What I observed was that if, instead of three dots I typed four, then the final one would be slightly different than the others:
…
….
In the body of a post, that final dot has an infinitesimally longer lead space than the others.
More significant, and where I first clued in to this detail, is in the Comments section. There, not only is the last dot graced by a longer lead, it is also bolder than its siblings. In fact, it’s of the same heft as a full stop at the end of a sentence.
I don’t know if this minutia of formatting behavior is particular to the WordPress theme of this blog (Connections, by Patricia Müller, a.k.a. Vanilla Mist) or if it’s some sort of standard inherent in the base code of the WordPress software. It isn’t critical that I should know this information; I’m just making a (very) minor observation.
p a n n a c e a e a e 