Ellipses

Writers use an ellipsis, or 3 consecutive dots, to indicate that they omitted text from a quotation. Ellipses are common in academic and scientific writing, but are less common in technical documentation. Avoid using ellipses in your documentation and UI text. Instead, omit unneeded information and include all necessary details when you write.

Don't use ellipses to indicate a pause or break in thought.

Omit ellipses from UI text

If a menu item, label, or loading animation in the UI has an ellipsis after a word and you need to document that part of the UI workflow, you don't need to include the ellipsis as long as it doesn't confuse the reader. Often, you can rewrite text to focus on the action rather than on the words in the UI. See the following examples:

Do this	Don't do this
Select Preview as to view your dashboard as a different user.	Select Preview as… to view your dashboard as a different user.
Enter your search in the search field.	Select enter search here… and enter your search.
Your metrics are loading.	The Metrics menu shows the message "Loading…".

Differences between an ellipsis and the more icon

The ellipsis punctuation symbol is different from the more icon (), which is an inline image of 3 horizontal dots taken from a GUI. Don't use an ellipsis when you can use an image of the icon. See more in the Usage dictionary and Inline images if you need to show icons in your text.