Ellipsis

Today we broke the world record for stupid emails received before noon.

Again, it’s Monday morning, so it’s hard to expect intelligence to rear its nerdy head so early… especially in the government.

I’ll spare you the details, but I do need to share a pet peeve. I appreciate that creative use of punctuation can enliven most any prose, but excessive use of one particular element when another would be more appropriate is as disturbing as “Eats, Shoots, & Leaves”. In this case it is not the apostrophe that is the culprit, but the oft-neglected ellipsis.

My dear Nova-Scotian contact has several quirks, among them the tendency to address colleagues using their family names (despite how obvious the choice is – “Why hello there Jones Jennifer!”), and to inject every sentence with at least one ellipsis …

Now an ellipsis is a very intriguing creature: able to soften the blow of a harsh judgement, to join words from an original phrase which was too verbose to quote directly, to lend an air of uncertainty to both death and taxes, and to add a sense of mystery to even the most mundane subject. However, it should be used sparingly and with prudence.

You can see for yourself the difference:

Text: “See Jane Run”.
Translation: See Jane Run.

Text: “See Jane Run…”
Translation: You see Jane running but then Jane smacks straight into a tree or gets hit by a transport truck (you can’t foresee which).

Text: “See… Jane Run.”
Translation: You see, or I think you see—anyways—if you actually can see, you will see many things before you actually see Jane run, if at all you get to see her run, I think.

Text: “See Jane… Run.”
Translation: You see Jane, and she plans to run sometime in the future, but I can’t possibly tell you whether you will ever see her run or not, since before she gets around to running an indeterminable number of accidents might befall her. In fact by the time we get to the running part it might not be Jane at all.

Text: “See… Jane… Run...”
Translation: Whether you can see or not, you need to sign a waiver releasing Jane (or any person that Jane may substitute for herself) from any obligation to run (or engage in running-like activity) either now in the future, since she has an incalculable risk of getting hit by a transport truck or smacking herself into a tree.

So how much softness or uncertainty can you really inject with an ellipsis?

Dear Mr. Smith,

I regret to inform you… that your estate has been seized and unfortunately… no funds remain in your chequing, savings, or business accounts... Your liquidity is now zero…. You may declare bankruptcy within 48 hours…

Have a nice day….

I exhort all of my dear readers to refrain from abuse of the poor ellipsis and concentrate instead on forming mouth-wateringly grammatical sentences.

Much obliged.