I personally quite like a good ellipsis. I have a tendency to trail off or end a thought in a shrug, which I think the ellipsis suits perfectly. My boss, however, uses ellipses frequently and...
I personally quite like a good ellipsis. I have a tendency to trail off or end a thought in a shrug, which I think the ellipsis suits perfectly.
My boss, however, uses ellipses frequently and almost always incorrectly. A lot of her messages feel like she's implying something unknown or almost sinister, but I think she just interprets their tone differently: "Come see me when you get the chance..." "FYI..." "Did you see the paperwork I left on your desk..." (all real examples).
I'd love to ask her about why she uses them as much as she does, but I'm sure it would turn into a whole thing that I really don't want to start, so I guess I'll just...
I vaguely remember reading somewhere that it is also used as a kind of de-intensifier by some people (millenial women?), so a modifier to make a sentence less formal/stiff.
I vaguely remember reading somewhere that it is also used as a kind of de-intensifier by some people (millenial women?), so a modifier to make a sentence less formal/stiff.
You know what, it probably is that. My boss is a genX woman, but she's got 3 millennial daughters so I wouldn't be surprised if she had picked it up from them.
You know what, it probably is that. My boss is a genX woman, but she's got 3 millennial daughters so I wouldn't be surprised if she had picked it up from them.
I agree with the text that ellipses are not necessarily "ghastly", and I also agree that they can be expressive. Unfortunately, however, they are opposed to the way I read. Both the previous and...
I agree with the text that ellipses are not necessarily "ghastly", and I also agree that they can be expressive. Unfortunately, however, they are opposed to the way I read. Both the previous and the current book I am reading make extensive use of ellipsis. They are both fiction. Although I do have an internal voice for my own thoughts, I don't have one for reading long-form content. I will read with an inner voice if it is short content, but anything above a certain threshold will go straight into my brain without imagined auditory assistance.
In those cases, I don't imagine a voice that is reading to me. In that context, ellipses are disruptive, as I fail to translate them into something meaningful to me. The only way for them to make sense is for me to purposefully translate them into an internal monologue which is unnatural for me. This is not something I learned in a style manual, but rather a natural development of how I read.
I am reminded of Allan Moore's Swamp Thing, which has ellipses in all of Swamp Thing's lines. I think the idea is to convey the character's slow way of speaking. That was not pleasant for me to read. Even as I read this post, unless I ignore them, the ellipsis causes me to uncomfortably slow the pace of my reading. I often ignore ellipsis and interpret the sentence as if they do not exist.
EDIT: now that I think of it, I find ellipsis bothersome in short texts too. That is because, even with an inner voice, I still read pretty fast and ellipses try to force me to slow my pace. That is one of the perks of being ADHD. That is also one of the disadvantages of being ADHD.
I read the same way as you describe. I've always interpreted ellipsis as a pause. This works out fine for formal writing, but is really frustrating for emails filled with a ,,, after every few...
I read the same way as you describe. I've always interpreted ellipsis as a pause. This works out fine for formal writing, but is really frustrating for emails filled with a ,,, after every few words. I'm so happy the author described those, I've seen it a lot from folks of a certain age.
I agree with the author. Sometimes less common uses of punctuation can be useful. I think ellipses are great. If you want to use commas and semicolons in odd ways I support you. Less so if it...
I agree with the author. Sometimes less common uses of punctuation can be useful. I think ellipses are great. If you want to use commas and semicolons in odd ways I support you. Less so if it breaks the immersion without a purpose.
But then the author goes and says:
We think we live at a time of an abundance of good writing, but so much of it is really just that… good writing… at which point good is no longer good enough.
I don't know who the author is, maybe there's some context I'm missing. But if they are indeed the student of literature their framing and references imply then how, in all that reading, did they manage to miss that "things used to be better, people who think things are good now are wrong" is as tired a trope as you'll ever find.
There is an abundance of good writing. The human race hasn't become dumber or less creative. The biggest differences between now and whichever imaginary point in history the author is referring to is that both leisure time and the population have increased. Another difference is that writers from developing countries have more direct access to mainstream audiences. We have more great writing than ever before, alongside more bad writing.
Who is this person to indict the near incomprehensively vast and varied creative output of the human race? Or at least the part of the human race that follows style guides.
But maybe my view is biased in some way, maybe writing really isn't as "good enough" as it used to be. It's a bold claim that demands evidence so surely in the next paragraph they'll support it...
One thing we ought to encourage in order to break this equilibrium of well-mannered mediocre prose is a better use of the ellipsis.
Yeah that'll do it... ellipses will reinvigorate the hearts and minds of a generation of authors.
No support for the premise, instead they seem to double down. Modern writing is mediocre because of style guides? I mean sure, style rules can be restrictive, but are they really capable of snuffing out creativity? Maybe the author and I are reading different style guides. Or maybe we think about creativity differently.
Like I said, I generally agree with the author's points but why, in a piece about good writing, would you recycle a hopelessly overused trope, make an astoundingly egocentric claim about modern writing, and then try to overfit it to your point with no supporting rationale or evidence?
I'm not sure that even the great ellipsis can save this hot take.
I used to write strongly with ellipses online, but have since trained out that behavior for the reasons the author mentioned. Now I misuse commas instead. What I used ellipses most frequently for...
I used to write strongly with ellipses online, but have since trained out that behavior for the reasons the author mentioned. Now I misuse commas instead.
What I used ellipses most frequently for was giving a sense of my thought process to live chats, mainly MMOs. My complete thoughts wouldn't come to me all at once, but since I wasn't speaking no one could hear the breaks where I wasn't stopping intentionally for grammar reasons. To address this I'd use ellipses everywhere. I wasn't trying to write prose... I was trying to let the reader know where I hesitated.
Maybe I should try to reincorporate them... they're probably annoying when used this way though. And thinking back on my 14 year old online writing style... I used them excessively.... I even would increase the length to convey extra long pauses.. or sometimes even shorten them.
That paragraph is pretty excessive compared to what I'd do even at my height of abusing them though. I think realistically I was treating punctuation less formally in general to fit the informal setting. Commas and periods had the same purpose: a pause, but with different lengths. But... sometimes I wanted a longer pause than a period. So I'd just add more periods.
The author also mentions semicolons. Semicolons are dead to me. I use them never. I've tried, but they always seem clunkier than a rewrite that removes them. Maybe this causes me to end up with some sentences that are technically sentence fragments, but it matters so little I'd wager very few outside language-based academics could even tell me what a sentence fragments is without looking it up.
This also is making me think a bit more about some of the other unwritten rules I have for my own writing. For example, I do not allow a sentence to contain more than two commas unless all the commas are part of a list. In practice, it means that I wouldn't write a statement, like this one, that contains commas for separating a throughout starter, a clarifying insert, and a list all at once. I'd retire rewrite it instead.
...Whatever. Yeah, I did too on GameFAQs and whatnot lol. Those Woolseyisms from JRPG translations were peppered with them and I still associate overuse with either them or teenagers trying to...
And thinking back on my 14 year old online writing style... I used them excessively....
Yeah, I did too on GameFAQs and whatnot lol. Those Woolseyisms from JRPG translations were peppered with them and I still associate overuse with either them or teenagers trying to sound edgy overusing them. Think it did a number on some of us.
I over-punctuate all of my writing like it’s going out of style — which, in this case, it just might be. I’d bet ellipses are falling out of favor at around the same rate as is face-to-face...
I over-punctuate all of my writing like it’s going out of style — which, in this case, it just might be.
I’d bet ellipses are falling out of favor at around the same rate as is face-to-face contact. People are losing the ability to, both figuratively and quite literally, read between the lines; it’s a skill that is no longer prioritized to be taught or learned, and our current standards of socialization seem to reflect this.
The rise of tone indicators and emojis have also most likely contributed to the decline of certain forms or habits of punctuation, as what was once implied has now been made explicit.
I personally quite like a good ellipsis. I have a tendency to trail off or end a thought in a shrug, which I think the ellipsis suits perfectly.
My boss, however, uses ellipses frequently and almost always incorrectly. A lot of her messages feel like she's implying something unknown or almost sinister, but I think she just interprets their tone differently: "Come see me when you get the chance..." "FYI..." "Did you see the paperwork I left on your desk..." (all real examples).
I'd love to ask her about why she uses them as much as she does, but I'm sure it would turn into a whole thing that I really don't want to start, so I guess I'll just...
I vaguely remember reading somewhere that it is also used as a kind of de-intensifier by some people (millenial women?), so a modifier to make a sentence less formal/stiff.
That's what I use exclamation points for! See how happy I am! Everything is fine! Please send me my fucking tax forms! Have a great day!
At some point I was told that my emails read as harsh because I hardly used explanation points at all.
You know what, it probably is that. My boss is a genX woman, but she's got 3 millennial daughters so I wouldn't be surprised if she had picked it up from them.
...
I agree with the text that ellipses are not necessarily "ghastly", and I also agree that they can be expressive. Unfortunately, however, they are opposed to the way I read. Both the previous and the current book I am reading make extensive use of ellipsis. They are both fiction. Although I do have an internal voice for my own thoughts, I don't have one for reading long-form content. I will read with an inner voice if it is short content, but anything above a certain threshold will go straight into my brain without imagined auditory assistance.
In those cases, I don't imagine a voice that is reading to me. In that context, ellipses are disruptive, as I fail to translate them into something meaningful to me. The only way for them to make sense is for me to purposefully translate them into an internal monologue which is unnatural for me. This is not something I learned in a style manual, but rather a natural development of how I read.
I am reminded of Allan Moore's Swamp Thing, which has ellipses in all of Swamp Thing's lines. I think the idea is to convey the character's slow way of speaking. That was not pleasant for me to read. Even as I read this post, unless I ignore them, the ellipsis causes me to uncomfortably slow the pace of my reading. I often ignore ellipsis and interpret the sentence as if they do not exist.
EDIT: now that I think of it, I find ellipsis bothersome in short texts too. That is because, even with an inner voice, I still read pretty fast and ellipses try to force me to slow my pace. That is one of the perks of being ADHD. That is also one of the disadvantages of being ADHD.
I read the same way as you describe. I've always interpreted ellipsis as a pause. This works out fine for formal writing, but is really frustrating for emails filled with a ,,, after every few words. I'm so happy the author described those, I've seen it a lot from folks of a certain age.
I agree with the author. Sometimes less common uses of punctuation can be useful. I think ellipses are great. If you want to use commas and semicolons in odd ways I support you. Less so if it breaks the immersion without a purpose.
But then the author goes and says:
I don't know who the author is, maybe there's some context I'm missing. But if they are indeed the student of literature their framing and references imply then how, in all that reading, did they manage to miss that "things used to be better, people who think things are good now are wrong" is as tired a trope as you'll ever find.
There is an abundance of good writing. The human race hasn't become dumber or less creative. The biggest differences between now and whichever imaginary point in history the author is referring to is that both leisure time and the population have increased. Another difference is that writers from developing countries have more direct access to mainstream audiences. We have more great writing than ever before, alongside more bad writing.
Who is this person to indict the near incomprehensively vast and varied creative output of the human race? Or at least the part of the human race that follows style guides.
But maybe my view is biased in some way, maybe writing really isn't as "good enough" as it used to be. It's a bold claim that demands evidence so surely in the next paragraph they'll support it...
Yeah that'll do it... ellipses will reinvigorate the hearts and minds of a generation of authors.
No support for the premise, instead they seem to double down. Modern writing is mediocre because of style guides? I mean sure, style rules can be restrictive, but are they really capable of snuffing out creativity? Maybe the author and I are reading different style guides. Or maybe we think about creativity differently.
Like I said, I generally agree with the author's points but why, in a piece about good writing, would you recycle a hopelessly overused trope, make an astoundingly egocentric claim about modern writing, and then try to overfit it to your point with no supporting rationale or evidence?
I'm not sure that even the great ellipsis can save this hot take.
I used to write strongly with ellipses online, but have since trained out that behavior for the reasons the author mentioned. Now I misuse commas instead.
What I used ellipses most frequently for was giving a sense of my thought process to live chats, mainly MMOs. My complete thoughts wouldn't come to me all at once, but since I wasn't speaking no one could hear the breaks where I wasn't stopping intentionally for grammar reasons. To address this I'd use ellipses everywhere. I wasn't trying to write prose... I was trying to let the reader know where I hesitated.
Maybe I should try to reincorporate them... they're probably annoying when used this way though. And thinking back on my 14 year old online writing style... I used them excessively.... I even would increase the length to convey extra long pauses.. or sometimes even shorten them.
That paragraph is pretty excessive compared to what I'd do even at my height of abusing them though. I think realistically I was treating punctuation less formally in general to fit the informal setting. Commas and periods had the same purpose: a pause, but with different lengths. But... sometimes I wanted a longer pause than a period. So I'd just add more periods.
The author also mentions semicolons. Semicolons are dead to me. I use them never. I've tried, but they always seem clunkier than a rewrite that removes them. Maybe this causes me to end up with some sentences that are technically sentence fragments, but it matters so little I'd wager very few outside language-based academics could even tell me what a sentence fragments is without looking it up.
This also is making me think a bit more about some of the other unwritten rules I have for my own writing. For example, I do not allow a sentence to contain more than two commas unless all the commas are part of a list. In practice, it means that I wouldn't write a statement, like this one, that contains commas for separating a throughout starter, a clarifying insert, and a list all at once. I'd retire rewrite it instead.
...Whatever.
Yeah, I did too on GameFAQs and whatnot lol. Those Woolseyisms from JRPG translations were peppered with them and I still associate overuse with either them or teenagers trying to sound edgy overusing them. Think it did a number on some of us.
I over-punctuate all of my writing like it’s going out of style — which, in this case, it just might be.
I’d bet ellipses are falling out of favor at around the same rate as is face-to-face contact. People are losing the ability to, both figuratively and quite literally, read between the lines; it’s a skill that is no longer prioritized to be taught or learned, and our current standards of socialization seem to reflect this.
The rise of tone indicators and emojis have also most likely contributed to the decline of certain forms or habits of punctuation, as what was once implied has now been made explicit.
… ;)
… :o
… :(