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Comment by bujak300 | Hacker News Reader

If a quote is incomplete and a meaningful part is omitted there are other typographical conventions to indicate that, like a double period .. for example

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>If a quote is incomplete and a meaningful part is omitted there are other typographical conventions to indicate that, like a double period .. for example

Yes, but what I'm talking about is the reverse situation. How would you know whether or not the quoting (outer) sentence is complete? You cannot logically infer that from the quoted (inner) sentence, which is why I'm saying that the second period is not redudant.

you would assume its complete in the absence of a double period. For instance, he said "some random shit". The quote in the previous sentence is a complete one. But then he said " some other ..". An incomplete quote. I personally think we should include the full stop though as it conveys more information and is less cognitive overhead, "it's obviously not redundant.". Even considering that we tend to treat punctuation as breaking/pausing I still think its appropriate as the quote ended AND its containing sentence.

>you would assume its complete in the absence of a double period

That is true for the inner sentence, but again, I'm talking about the outer sentence. It needs its own terminator to make it unambiguously clear that it is complete.

I've never seen a double period used to mean anything. An ellipsis is a specific mark made by three periods. Or is this a Britishism?

It’s not used for anything. I can’t imagine where anyone got the idea that it is.

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