I know this is an old topic, but I saw it mentioned in another topic today, and it would be useful to add some information and hopefully reach some conclusion.
The following applies to English only, other languages have their own rules. There are two issues here:
- Spaces and ellipses in general
In terms of standards and authoritative style guides, this is all over the place, from no spaces at all, to spaces before and after, to spaces before and after and between each dot of the ellipsis (the “Chicago ellipsis”), to different rules for different kinds of ellipses. Wikipedia has a good summary. In the end, most typography guides suggest the typographer can choose by themselves. I would suggest we follow Robert Bringhurst’s recommendation:
In English (but usually not in French), when the ellipsis occurs at the end of a sentence, a fourth dot, the period, is added and the space at the beginning of the ellipsis disappears… When the ellipsis combines with a comma, exclamation mark or question mark, the same typographic principle applies. Otherwise, a word space is required fore and aft.
i … j
k…
l…, l
l, … l
m…?
n…!
(Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style, pp. 82-83)
- Capitalization of first word of a title starting with an ellipsis
This is very rare, and I don’t think it was considered in any style guide. (Usually a sentence staring with any ellipsis is a quotation, and you can adjust the capitalization in the quotation — and starting quotations with ellipses is discouraged.) You can argue it both ways, and I will:
- The word “and” is evidently the first word of a title, therefore it should be capitalized. This is a basic rule and there is no reason to complicate it.
- Starting a title with an ellipsis implies that the first part of the title is truncated, and, as such, the “and” isn’t the first word in the sentence and should not be capitalized.
I would say both are valid arguments, because there’s no set rules about this. In general the second argument is more convincing to me, unless artist intent is clearly in opposition.
I also agree with @UltimateRiff that the one-character ellipsis is preferable, and Bringhurst had nothing against it, even writing in 1992)