What does .... mean after a statement?

Answer 1

The three dots (normally three) that appear sometimes in text are called "ellipses" or "ellipsis points." "Ellipses" is the plural of "ellipsis."

Ellipsis means that something has been omitted. When you quote something but you leave part of it out, you want to let your reader know that the omission is yours and not that the original author said it that way.
For example, the U.S. Declaration of Independence begins with the words: "When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another." If you wanted to quote this but shorten it by leaving out part of the beginning, you would write: "When . . . it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another" [and so on]. Normally people try to leave enough of the original quote to make grammatical sense as well as to express a complete idea.

If the part you were omitting came at the end instead of in the middle, you would add a fourth point to stand for the period at the end of the sentence. Your question has four points, so that may be what you are asking about. Because I did not quote the entire sentence in my example above, it should really be shown with ellipsis at the end as well, like this:

"When . . . it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another. . . ."