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: 
Personally I could live with any of 1,2 or (preferably) 5. Expecting people to use symbols that are not easily available on all keyboards and setups seems unnecessarily complex and, which is more, will simply be ignored by the vast majority of users.

If I had to choose, I would go for 5. While I appreciate correct punctuation as much as anyone and will be quick to edit out things like "I am wondering.........." which are so common in internetspeak, I feel that requesting strict adherence to typographical conventions is not really reasonable on a public Q&A site. In any case, the conventions themselves are not so clear here with different style guides [suggesting different variants](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipsis#In_English). 

Then there are the various problems associated with some people not having set their browser to auto detect character encoding or who have set it to non UTF8 defaults. They won't be able to see options 3 and 4 correctly which makes these, in my opinion, more effort than they're worth.

Given that each of these options has its adherents and *all of them will be understood* I think the best option is 5.
If I can restrain myself from editing out the first word in all those ELU questions starting with a redundant ***So*** ([like](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/129380/) [these](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/128106/) [three](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/127868/)), I see no reason why others can't just accept the OP's typography.

Having said that, I don't *entirely* subscribe to Kitfox's option #5 here. Whilst I don't think mods (or anyone else, for that matter) should put any effort into "standardising" this particular aspect of typography (in *Answers*, too? - how about *Comments*?), I don't see any reason to rail against anyone who wants to do it. Unless the OP in question objects, in which case he has the final say.

We've been given [clear guidelines](https://english.stackexchange.com/a/77866/2637) on some typographical conventions adopted by one of our more "professional" users. Which is all very nice, but I doubt even *he* seriously thinks it would be worthwhile attempting to enforce consistency across all ELU posts.