This is a PSA.

Okay, not true.

More of an annoyance.

When somebody says “those three dots” or “the little dots” some variation to describe a button that provides extended or additional information, there’s an actual effing name for it, and it’s not “the three dots”.

It’s called an ellipsis.

Used appropriately, the ellipsis in text indicates that a thought has trailed off or that it represents other, related ideas or thoughts. It could also be used to represent “more”.

Please, for the love of all that is holy, stop referring to it as “the three dots”.

It’s singular. It could be “an ellipsis” or sometimes “the ellipsis”. There’s even a unicode version:

What does it look like? Well…

You could even simplify it from three syllables down to one: call it “more”.

But it’s most certainly not called “those three little dots”.