KJ Rainey, Tom Stoic, Tyson 4D…and the guy ‘teaching’ you how to get your first client without any experience (cough Cardinal cough Manson).

It’s not your first time seeing it, but you’re a baby bear following mama bear—your first emails are trying to imitate their writing style.

Something about those ‘3 dots’ makes your writing feel authentic. You have irregular spacing between sentences, 

Irregular capitalization. 

And you keep using ellipses…the …wrong way…

I get it—it took me a while to get the hang of it. But, trust me, it’s easy.

Let’s get into it: 

Ellipses are often used to reduce the length of a quoted sentence, speech, or paragraph—WITHOUT CHANGING THE MEANING.

Take a look:

Original

“We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight” –Winston Churchill 

Edit

“We shall go on to the end…we shall defend our island…we shall fight.”

See? Shortened without changing the meaning. Here’s another example:

Original

"I don’t forgive people because I’m weak, I forgive them because I am strong enough to know people make mistakes." –Marilyn Monroe

Edit

“I…forgive people because…I am strong enough to know people make mistakes.” 

Think of it as the grammar castration officer. 

It's also used to: 

• Indicate hesitation/pauses:

“Umm…I’m not sure what he said”

“Hmm…shall we go to the beach?”

• Or trailing off:

“I can’t do this anymore. I just…”

It’s commonly used in informal writing, novels, poetry, texting friends etc. But it isn’t just about knowing when to use them—it’s about using them with style and consistency, like great writers do.

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

• “It is a thousand pities never to say what one feels ... never to be fully understood.”

• “She would not say of any one in the world now that they were this or that ... She would not finish it.”

• “And all the time let it come ... this beauty ... this terror.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

• “I wasn’t actually in love, but felt a sort of tender curiosity. …”

• “The idea staggered me. … He must be very wealthy.”

• “It was full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it. …”

What do you notice? Just a bunch of quotes? 

Close enough.

Virginia Woolf consistently uses ellipses with spaces before and after them—F. S. Fitzgerald uses ellipses with a space before them but no spaces between the dots, leaving any space before his ellipses.

You don’t want to format like this…then this …and this…. That’s just wrong. 

Noticed the 4-dot ellipsis?

"and this.... That's...wrong"

It's really just a period and an ellipsis. Use them when omitting parts of a quote while also ending a full sentence. If not, use the latter.

“Take it off at once…. Then come help check these glasses.”
“Take it off at once, and come help check these glasses….”

Ellipses are, umm…a bit tricky. But it’s easy once you get the hang of it. If you’re up for it, take a test here. I’ll grade and send the results to your email. 

P.S. Join The Copy Grind Discord Server to meet other copywriters and…oh! a FREE, LOADED copywriting value vault. Click here to join.

—Udodi

KJ Rainey, Tom Stoic, Tyson 4D…and the guy ‘teaching’ you how to get your first client without any experience (cough Cardinal cough Manson).

It’s not your first time seeing it, but you’re a baby bear following mama bear—your first emails are trying to imitate their writing style.

Something about those ‘3 dots’ makes your writing feel authentic. You have irregular spacing between sentences, 

Irregular capitalization. 

And you keep using ellipses…the …wrong way…

I get it—it took me a while to get the hang of it. But, trust me, it’s easy.

Let’s get into it: 

Ellipses are often used to reduce the length of a quoted sentence, speech, or paragraph—WITHOUT CHANGING THE MEANING.

Take a look:

Original

“We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight” –Winston Churchill 

Edit

“We shall go on to the end…we shall defend our island…we shall fight.”

See? Shortened without changing the meaning. Here’s another example:

Original

"I don’t forgive people because I’m weak, I forgive them because I am strong enough to know people make mistakes." –Marilyn Monroe

Edit

“I…forgive people because…I am strong enough to know people make mistakes.” 

Think of it as the grammar castration officer. 

It's also used to: 

• Indicate hesitation/pauses:

“Umm…I’m not sure what he said”

“Hmm…shall we go to the beach?”

• Or trailing off:

“I can’t do this anymore. I just…”

It’s commonly used in informal writing, novels, poetry, texting friends etc. But it isn’t just about knowing when to use them—it’s about using them with style and consistency, like great writers do.

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

• “It is a thousand pities never to say what one feels ... never to be fully understood.”

• “She would not say of any one in the world now that they were this or that ... She would not finish it.”

• “And all the time let it come ... this beauty ... this terror.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

• “I wasn’t actually in love, but felt a sort of tender curiosity. …”

• “The idea staggered me. … He must be very wealthy.”

• “It was full of money—that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it. …”

What do you notice? Just a bunch of quotes? 

Close enough.

Virginia Woolf consistently uses ellipses with spaces before and after them—F. S. Fitzgerald uses ellipses with a space before them but no spaces between the dots, leaving any space before his ellipses.

You don’t want to format like this…then this …and this…. That’s just wrong. 

Noticed the 4-dot ellipsis?

"and this.... That's...wrong"

It's really just a period and an ellipsis. Use them when omitting parts of a quote while also ending a full sentence. If not, use the latter.

“Take it off at once…. Then come help check these glasses.”
“Take it off at once, and come help check these glasses….”

Ellipses are, umm…a bit tricky. But it’s easy once you get the hang of it. If you’re up for it, take a test here. I’ll grade and send the results to your email. 

P.S. Join The Copy Grind Discord Server to meet other copywriters and…oh! a FREE, LOADED copywriting value vault. Click here to join.

—Udodi