Excellent Ellipsis Essay

Ellipsis, I love 'em and use them far too often. It's a bad habit, but I cling to the practice because sometimes it's simply a lazy way to insinuate something without having to explain...well, you know.

Wiki defines ellipsis:

Ellipsis (plural ellipses; from Greek ἔλλειψις 'omission') in printing and writing refers to the row of three full stops (... or . . . ) or asterisks (* * *) indicating an intentional omission. This punctuation mark is also called a suspension point, points of ellipsis, periods of ellipsis, or colloquially, dot-dot-dot. An ellipsis is sometimes used to indicate a pause in speech, an unfinished thought or, at the end of a sentence, a trailing off into silence (aposiopesis).

The site goes on to say:

The use of ellipses can either mislead or clarify, and the reader must rely on the good intentions of the writer who uses it.

That's a pretty fair warning to anyone reading this blog. Ambiguity is probably one of my better traits, in fact. I am what I am....

I sometimes often misuse ellipses and sometimes almost always fail to end a sentence that's ending in ellipses with the correct extra and fourth period, the extra ellepses. I hope that's simply an oversight, a typo, and not some character fault.... It probably validates the fact that I'm lazy....

I'm making an effort to be correct. That might not be good enough for you, but...there ARE ellipses haters out there....

If they find their way to this blog....

I've used ellipses a lot, and have even been accused by a former girlfriend that I also speak that way. Imagine that.... I will have to admit I do sometimes speak haltingly... and sometimes st...st...st...stutter a bit. She and I had a rocky relationship, to put it mildly, and it finally ended badly after ending semi-badly a half-dozen previous times. I'm sure you know how that goes.... I also easily lose my train of thought which isn't hard when one has a one-track mind....

I always preferred to quietly breakup with her via a note left on her pillow or in a sock drawer. As per the definition of ellipses, I would write my sad and tortured thoughts in a melodramatic way: "I gave and gave to this relationship, but you never even tried...."

I quit writing those the next-to-last time we broke up when she said "Is this another one of those damn dot-dot-dot letters?"

Did you know that "dot-dot-dot" is the Morse symbol for the letter "S" as in "SOS"? I wasn't for sure...some folks don't know things like that. "- - -" or "Dash-Dash-Dash" is "O". Just thought I'd mention that... Sometimes I use dashes -- when I think they're better instead of ellipses--but usually only one - or at the most, two --.

FOUR dots .... or "dot-dot-dot-dot" is the Morse code for the letter "H".

Just thought you should know....

Now you can spell "HOSS" in Morse Code.

My next essay:

"What's so wrong with using three question marks??? "