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copied!<p>I got ready to quote Microsoft's guidelines for when to use ellipses, but by time time I got here, others had already quoted Microsoft's guidelines, giving answers different than the one I was going to give.</p> <p>Apparently Microsoft has changed their guidelines, and they don't exactly follow them consistently themselves.</p> <p>Anyway, the <i>current</i> Microsoft guidelines, as far as I know, are the <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa511258.aspx" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines</a> (PDF version available <a href="http://download.microsoft.com/download/e/1/9/e191fd8c-bce8-4dba-a9d5-2d4e3f3ec1d3/ux%20guide.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a>). Regarding <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa974176.aspx#punctuation" rel="nofollow noreferrer">ellipses</a> in particular, their guideline is to use ellipses only when the command needs additional information to complete, not merely when the command opens another window. (In part, then, ellipses mean that the command is "safe" to click because it won't immediately do anything.)</p> <p>So About et al don't need ellipses because they don't need any extra information. Print gets ellipses, because it won't print until you click OK. At least some versions of Microsoft's guidelines explicitly state that Preferences / Options should not have ellipses, because successful execution of the Preferences command only means to show the Preferences dialog, not to necessarily do anything. (This last one seems a bit arbitrary to me.)</p>

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