I'm working on a site that primarily has a flat hierarchy. It's very wide and shallow (lots of sections hanging off the root of the site, but very few subsections).
As a result of this the design has evolved so that currently selected side-menu items are bold and have an arrow to the right, pointing at the content.
Now, this brings us to a dilemma. On very rare occasions one of the menu items does not lead to a straight content page, but to another landing page with its own side menu.
One proposal is to give such menu items an ellipsis to signify that there are more menu items behind that click:
download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups
However, according to a previous post here: What are the rules of using ellipsis on buttons, the use of an ellipsis is discouraged when there is not an actual confirmation step linked to that menu item, and suggest using an arrow instead.
But because we already have an arrow in the navigation, this introduces a contradictory pattern - one arrow means 'this is selected' and the other means 'this will take you somewhere else'.
So, can I use the ellipsis approach after all? Is that a recognised pattern as far as on-page navigation is concerned, or do we need to rethink the whole design approach (which, unfortunately for a site of this size is quite an undertaking)?