The meaning of "u2026"

[Birkby]

What does u2026 mean and where does it originate . Whenever I have seen it used it seems to suggest absolute surety or certainty. Thank you in advance for any help.

[dr john]

These are deep waters, Holmes. It looks as though /u2026 is a string of characters that can be inserted into a piece of text to get around a problem in using the Java computer language. It seems to mean ... (ellipsis) rather than anything suggesting certainty, though.

Scroll down to 'I think I know what's wrong with /u' here
http://www.cocoadev.com/index.pl?UniCode
to see if it makes any sense to you.

[Birkby]

Dr John
Thanks for this I am still not sure.

I came across it when reading report about Margret Thatcher giving Nigel Lawson her support in the House of Commons.

As follows :
"A dangerous split was becoming evident at the top of government. She seemed not to care, biffing Howe about as carelessly as she always had. Nor was anyone much convinced when she told the world she "fully, gladly, joyfully, unequivocally, generously\u2026 fully, fully, fully, fully" supported Lawson as her Chancellor. People said she had no sense of humour. They were wrong. It was just a slightly strange one"

[kempie]

As indicated by dr john the appearance of \u2026 in that text is the result of a misrendering of the ellipsis character i.e. "..."

The text you have reproduced appears in this article...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml =/arts/2007/05/17/ftmarr117.xml

but has been paraphrased from a public statement made during a press conference with Margaret Thatcher on 14th June 1989. The text is taken from two answers...

"I fully, gladly, joyfully, unequivocally, generously support the Chancellor. I thought the speech that he made in detail about the whole position in the economic debate was absolutely superb, it was measured, it set out his policy in detail. I fully support. And set out absolutely clearly that the overriding policy is to get inflation down, that I repeated in the House yesterday, and I'll repeat it today. That is and will remain our overriding policy, to get inflation down. Now I can read that speech out too if you would like it, it would take rather a long time."

"I did not answer about Alan Walters in the House yesterday. I have been most robust about the [ Nigel Lawson] Chancellor, I can't be more robust. What would you like me to say that is even more robust, I am totally and utterly robust about the Chancellor and I am fully, fully and fully behind him. Fully."

http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displ aydocument.asp?docid=107700

[Birkby]

Thanks to both of you , got the point now.