HTML entity for an ellipsis …

… is the HTML entity for the ellipsis …, U+2026 HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS, and … and … are its numeric references. HTML5 added a second name, …. In UTF-8 it’s E2 80 A6.

Character    … U+2026 HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS
Named        …   (HTML5 also reads …)
Numeric      …    …
UTF-8        E2 80 A6

Encoding Loading… gives Loading….

One character or three periods

… is a single character that the font draws as one unit, while ... is three. Both are fine text, but they differ wherever characters are counted or compared: '…'.length is 1 where '...'.length is 3, which counts against a maxlength or a character limit, and a search for ... doesn’t find …. Unicode’s NFKC normalization turns … into ..., so a search index or slug generator that normalizes treats them alike.

In interface text, a menu item or button that opens a dialog asking for more input ends in an ellipsis, as in Save As…; Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines and Microsoft’s Windows guidelines both ask for it.

Let CSS cut text off

Don’t type an ellipsis to shorten text that doesn’t fit. CSS draws one at the cut and keeps the full text in the page, for copying, search and screen readers:

.title { overflow: hidden; white-space: nowrap; text-overflow: ellipsis; }

.summary {                    /* three lines, then … */
  display: -webkit-box;
  -webkit-box-orient: vertical;
  -webkit-line-clamp: 3;
  overflow: hidden;
}

… and JSX

Browsers, CommonMark and Python’s html.unescape read both names, but JSX doesn’t know …. JSX compilers decode only the HTML 4 names, so in Babel, TypeScript, esbuild and oxc, <p>Loading&mldr;</p> renders the text Loading…, while <p>Loading&hellip;</p> renders Loading…. In JSX use …, the character itself, or {'\u2026'}.

Legacy pages sometimes contain …, from Windows-1252, where the ellipsis was 0x85. The HTML standard reads it as … and reports a parse error; this tool does the same. Write … instead.

In CSS and Markdown

In generated content it’s content: "\2026", for example after a truncated label you build yourself. CommonMark decodes … in Markdown text and leaves it literal in code spans. Three typed periods stay three periods unless a typographer converts them, such as markdown-it with typographer on.