U+2026
HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS

Single-character ellipsis.

Codepoint

U+2026

Short

ELL

Group

ellipsis

Class

typography

Default

kept

Replaced by

...

What it is

Three dots as a single character, with the spacing between them set by the font rather than by three separate periods.

Where it comes from

From word processors converting three typed periods, and from any professionally set text.

When it belongs

As typography, yes, and it is kept by default. It matters where a program counts characters or matches on three periods — the single character will not match, which is a quietly confusing way for a search to fail.

What TraceFree does with it

Context guards can only ever make a cleanup gentler, never sharper. A rule saying “always remove” does not override them.

How to remove it

In TraceFree, turn on the clipboard watcher and copy the text — the finding appears with a before-and-after comparison of the affected lines. For files, a watched folder does the same, keeping a backup copy alongside.

How to write it

This page never prints the character itself, only ways of writing it. A page about invisible characters that contained invisible characters would be unreviewable — and that is the problem the program exists to solve.