Comma after ellipsis when ellipsis is used to show hesitation?

Question

I like using ellipsis for hesitation, but I'm not sure how to correctly punctuate when I use it in the middle of a sentence. Here's a sentence I quickly made up. Which one would be the correct one?

One:

"I went to the store today...and I bought you your favorite drink!"

Two:

"I went to the store today...,and I bought you your favorite drink!"

Three:

"I went to the store today... and I bought you your favorite drink!"

How would I go about punctuating this if a comma goes before "and," but an ellipsis is placed before "and"? Since ellipsis is technically its own piece of punctuation, would example two be correct?

Answer 1

The third one is the most correct of the three, but I'd only use it as a way to mimic speech -- not as a written sentence. For instance, certain authors will spell words incorrectly to mimic accents. This is much the same.

If I were writing it, I would split the two sentence fragments.

"I went to the store today," I told him, "and I bought you your favourite drink!"

This gives a natural break in the sentence to the reader without using ellipses.

Answer 2

Strictly speaking the ellipsis is used to indicate missing words not required for the reader to understand the meaning. It is also used to imply hesitancy in speech.

(1):

"I went to the store today...and I bought you your favo[u]rite drink!" .

This is wrong because there are no missing words and, unlike example three, there is no space between the ellipsis and the following words.

(2):

"I went to the store today...,and I bought you your favo[u]rite drink!" .

As (1) but the comma is also redundant...

(3):

"I went to the store today... and I bought you your favourite drink!"

This is most correct, but there are still no missing words, the use of 'AND' tends to drive the sentence forward (as it is complete), so the reader may miss the intended hesitation.

You may find: ""I went to the store today... I bought you your favourite drink!", is more effective.

Answer 3

In agreement with Dan, I would consider the third option to be correct. Never have I seen a comma after an ellipses as it seems rather redundant. With regards to dialogue, it does not seem natural or fitting.