Ellipsis: What it is and how it’s used.

A huge pet-peeve of mine is the overuse of Ellipsis.  Especially because most of those that use it are not aware of what it is and how it’s used. 

Ellipsis…

With the following definition, no wonder so many don’t understand what it is and how to use it.

el·lip·sis
/əˈlipsis/
noun
noun: ellipsis; plural noun: ellipses
the omission from speech or writing of a word or words that are superfluous or able to be understood from contextual clues.
a set of dots indicating an ellipsis

For the purpose of this post, we will be talking about the punctuation.  Believe it or not, Wikipedia defines this in a much more understandable way:

An ellipsis (plural ellipses; from the Ancient Greek: ἔλλειψις, élleipsis, “omission” or “falling short“) is a series of dots (typically three, such as “…”) that usually indicates an intentional omission of a word, sentence, or whole section from a text without altering its original meaning.

This is how I best know the purpose of ellipsis.  In fact, I often use this when I’m writing academic papers and I knowingly omit words or a section from text.  For example, say I am quoting an author directly from their work and the original text read:

“Of the traits considered in sugarcane, sucrose content, fiber content, sugar yield, fiber yield and total biomass yield along with other important desirable morphological traits have received more attention,”

I may choose to omit parts of that very dense sentence and write:

“Of the traits considered in sugarcane, sucrose content…along with other important desirable morphological traits have received more attention.”

That […] stands in for that chunk of sentence that I intentionally removed from the sentence.  Notice how it does not remove the meaning from the sentence.  That’s a very correct use of the ellipsis.

According to Grammarly, there is a much more common, non-formal and non-academic way to use ellipsis.  It can be used to show pause or a trailing off from a sentence.  Grammarly provides the following examples:

Andrew, can you, um . . . never mind, I forgot what I was saying. So, do you think we should . . . ?

This, again, is also a correct use.

How are you using it?

First of all, let me apologize to those that are very guilty of this.  Know that I mean not to offend, but to educate.  The more we learn, the smarter we’ll become.  So with that said, how are you using those three little dots?  And what do others think when you use it?

I ask because this is a particular issue when having a conversation through writing, whether it be in a chat, an email, or texting.

Punctuation replacement

Possibly one of the worst abuses of ellipsis is as a punctuation replacement.  This means rather than periods or commas, you are using […] to indicate a stop or pause.  It looks something like the following:

Hey…how are you today…I need to go to the grocery store…I’m hungry for something sweet

It’s all wrong.  But it’s amazing how often I get messages formatted this way, casual or not.  The other frequently abusive use of ellipsis is simply as a way to end a sentence.  So assume I text my husband: I Love You!  Then he responds with: I Love You Too…  Tell me that you won’t look at that and wonder what he is implying or what he isn’t saying.  I know it’s not a big deal, but it drives me absolutely crazy!

Credit

https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/maturity-classification-of-sugarcane-emsaccharum-officinarumem-l-genotypes-grown-under-different-production-environments-of-ethiop-2329-8863-1000304-95334.html

https://www.grammarly.com/blog/ellipsis/