Markdown three ellipses between paragraphs - html

Question

I'm wanting to get this effect where one paragraph ends. Then centered on a line by itself are three ellipses '. . .' then the new paragraph starts on the next line.
There is an example of this on Daringfireball it looks exactly like the image below. Notice the three dots in the center of the image!
The Markdown to accomplish this can be viewed like the screen shot says and it looks like this * * *
however when I do that it puts an html hard rule across the whole page. Looking at the Markdown docs this seems like normal behavior so how did John get that to show up like that? Here is what the code behind the scenes looks like.
It looks like you can just add * * * to a line on its own? You would not believe how many people care about truncating a sentence at the en..... I've spent 25 minutes trying to search for such a simple thing I'm almost laughing at how pathetic it is. I'm simply wanting to add three ellipses centered on there own line using Markdown. Possible? I'm starting to think not? Or is this only accomplished with HTML and CSS. I've been told these three dots signals a passage of time when its done in novels which is exactly what I would want to use it for. Anyone can help it would be great.

Answer 1

If you check the CSS (here and here) for that page, you'll see that he used the following syles to get the effect:
hr {
height: 1px;
margin: 2em 1em 4em 0;
text-align: center;
border-color: #777;
border-width: 0;
border-style: dotted;
}
.article hr:after {
content: "···";
letter-spacing: 2em;
}

Answer 2

From what i understood from the question.
check the snippet
p {
border: 1px solid black;
}
div {
margin: auto;
text-align:center;
font-weight:bold;
font-size:16px;
}
<p>
This is the content dmmy content This is the content dmmy content This is the content dmmy content
</p>
<div id="dot">. . . .</div>
Hope it helps