Q. Dear CMOS Editors: When omitting the end of a sentence in a quotation, should there be a space after the ellipsis before the closing quotation mark? (1) The Supreme Court ordered the school districts to desegregate “with all deliberate speed. . . .” (2) The Supreme Court ordered the school districts to desegregate “with all deliberate speed. . . .” I see that CMOS 13.55 indicates there should not be a final space, but I’m not sure if that rule applies beyond sentences that are deliberately grammatically incomplete.
A. Don’t add a space. Note too that there is rarely a need to put an ellipsis at the end of a quotation that forms a grammatical sentence, whether in itself or, as here, with what precedes it. You would be fine with (3) The Supreme Court ordered the school districts to desegregate “with all deliberate speed.”