ellipses

When you want to leave out part of text material you are quoting, use ellipsis marks (three dots with a space on each side) to indicate the omission.

If the words before the ellipses form a grammatically correct sentence, put a period at the end of the sentence and follow it by ellipses. In most cases, however, you don't have to use ellipses at the beginning or end of quotes, just within them. When you add a word or words to the quote, to make it clear, enclose the added word or words in brackets to show that it is not part of the original quotation.

When you quote whole paragraphs but omit text between any two of them, center three asterisks, with spaces between them (* * *), between the paragraphs quoted. See also quotation marks.