Question: So there is a debate about how to edit ellipses in posts on the site. This has come to a head [in this latest post](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/129353/is-on-one-hand-on-the-other-hand-a-cliche-to-be-avoided).

Here is what needs to be decided as an official policy so that we don't end up with edit wars/community wikis from too many edits.

What do we want for a site policy?  

1. use three periods ...  

2. use three periods with a space in between . . .  

3. use a narrow-space plus dots (separate each dot with U+202F NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE)  

4. use a proper UTF8 ellipsis …  

5. let the poster decide which method to use and otherwise leave it alone

Answer: 
The only possible correct answer ***for a site policy*** is option 5: let the poster decide, and leave it the [expletive deleted] alone.

Edit wars like in the linked example are laughable. It's an ellipsis in an internet post, folks, not a government ID number on a tax return.

If you encounter a post where someone used regular spaces between the periods and it's breaking across two lines, then you can edit to fix it; but please also fix *all* typos and misspellings in the post while you're at it. If they merely used non-breaking spaces and you like your ellipses space-free (or vice versa), then please, for the love of all that's holy, go find something better to do with your time.
Unfortunately, typography and ease of use are at odds here, plus different style guides and typographers disagree about the details.

The one thing that nearly everyone agrees on is that there should be **some** extra space between the dots, and it should **never** break across lines. The exact amount of space varies according to context and taste, but NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE (U+202F) and NO-BREAK SPACE (U+00A0) are both reasonable choices. I prefer the latter because it's easy to type on a Mac keyboard (Option+Space).

I personally avoid the Unicode HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS (U+2026) because very few typefaces actually have a well-rendered ellipsis glyph, so it's just as hard to type as other solutions **and** typographically inferior. For example, the ellipsis character in the question renders on my Mac indistinguishably from three unspaced periods.

Because there's no ideal solution here, I think it's usually best to leave ellipses alone when editing unless they are **grossly** incorrect. It's easy to actually make them **worse** if you're not careful (e.g., accidentally replacing non-breaking spaces with ordinary ones).

When writing new posts, I recommend encoding ellipses roughly in this order:

1. Separate periods with NO-BREAK SPACE (U+00A0) if you can type it easily (Option+Space on Mac keyboards, `&nbsp;` in Markdown): “. . .”
2. Use unspaced periods: “...”
3. Use HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS (U+2026) – **not recommended** because it renders the same as unspaced periods in the ELU font, and it's harder to type (Option+Semicolon on Mac keyboards, `&#x2026;` in Markdown): “…”
4. Separate periods with NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE (U+202F) – **not recommended** because it has rendering problems similar to HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS (U+2026), and it's even harder to type (`&#x202f;` in Markdown): “. . .”
5. **Do not** separate periods with ordinary spaces.