Ellipses

[PassportPanicFuuuck]

Why... do some... people... write everything... in a sort of... stream of... consciousness... way like this... instead of using... actual... punctuation...? Does anyone else... find it... really... annoying?

Surely it also takes longer to type?

(Yes, I know I'll probably be sent off to Pedants' Corner.)

You want to try reading the work my Yr 6s produce in English lessons…

But ‘No’ is a complete sentence! 😆

Well, it does slow down the pace so that a reader can take a breath. It's better than additional points or questions - minus the necessarily enclosed question mark, by the way - stuck between parentheses and missing any comma or other punctuation that would make the question easy to read out loud without gasping for air by the end...

Well of course it's about communication and being understood. Punctuation should aid comprehension, nothing more IMO. It should be almost invisible in fact.

DH is a commercial contracts manager so is pretty hot on punctuation. There was a case in the US recently regarding the use (or rather omission) of an Oxford comma which significantly changed the terms of a contract. Of course in my day (1980s) when I was doing a secretarial course at Pitmans College we were taught how to type legal documents, and at that time the only punctuation marks used were the full stops at the end of a sentence. This forced the person drafting it to ensure that the meaning was clear and could not be given more than one interpretation.

We also had to fill in any gaps at the end of a line with hyphens, so nothing could be added later, so technically full tops and hyphens were the only punctuation allowed.

Well of course it's about communication and being understood. Punctuation should aid comprehension, nothing more IMO.

Exactly.

Another weird thing I've spotted quite a few times recently is people inserting a comma in bonkers places such as between the subject and the verb. For example, "The boy, went to get his book." What's that all about?!

Do you mean people use more than 1 ellipsis in a paragraph or even sentence?

I do love a well-placed ellipsis. When posting on here I think I do use them more than in my usual writing. Probably because I use them to contradict stupidity quite a lot and I encounter more stupid comments on here than in RL.

Yes, that's exactly what I mean - I thought that was clear from the example in my OP.

I uses ellipses a lot, and I'm trying to cut down, because I annoy myself with them. But I also like semi-colons. I just like properly used punctuation.

I don't think I have noticed anyone using ellipses in the way that the OP indicates. I know people often use them as an easy/informal way of indicating pauses in speech, often for a mildly comic effect (as in "I just don't ... I can't even ..." to indicate someone struggling for words to convey how wrong, daft, etc. they think another poster has been), in addition to using them in accordance with formal orthographic rules. But I haven't come across people just gratuitously wanging them in.

It is usually possible to tell what kind of 'vibe' is intended by an informal usage of ellipses. You have to remember that since the advent of social media we have all needed to evolve strategies in written language to convey some of the rich nuances that are present in face-to-face, spoken, encounters. Pace, body language etc.

I use an ellipsis to indicate missing text.

For example,
"I uses ellipses a lot..."

I like correct English.

Interesting, as I've seen it quite a lot.

I have no issue with them being used for comic effect - I think that can work well. But using them instead of commas, semi-colons, colons, full stops and paragraphs works rather less well imo.

I use them all the time ... and I'm a copyeditor...

No, but seriously ... (OK, I'll stop now) I often put one at the end of texts/Whatsapp messages etc to soften things a bit if something looks abrupt written down.

I'm an editor. I don't generally use them.

I use them on here when I've got more to say but ...

I’ve recently found out that putting a full stop at the end of a sentence in a text or WhatsApp message is now interpreted as being aggressive, and I have reluctantly, mostly stopped doing it with younger people. However, it means that each sentence has to be a separate message which annoys the fuck out of me when I get them (I just send one paragraph and leave the last full stop off). Just put some bloody full stops in so that my phone isn’t pinging away 10 times in a row!

That's the sign of somebody not confident in language, where their thoughts don't flow into one another.

It was. It was rhetorical as I was shocked that anyone would use multiple ellipses.

In my job, it’s the people who speak English as a second language who use them. I have often wondered if it is cultural.

I put them at the end of messages to soften things but DD in her twenties says why do all old people write threatening messages? So if I'm away and text "It's bin day tomorrow...", I think I'm giving a polite reminder about a future thing that hasn't happened yet but she reads it as "put the bins out or something undefined and ominous will happen to you." I've had to stop doing it.

I think people actually find it difficult to change the way that they have evolved their written style. I know - because I've tried - that I put things between hyphens too often, and (quite frequently) I use brackets when a simple comma or two would suffice. If people are used to adding ellipses all the time it could be a hard habit to break, but at least it is "correct" in one sense.

The one that drives me really mad is when posters (not so much on MN) put in multiple commas,,,, I have no idea what they either think it means,,,, or what they are trying to convey!

At least it's better than the people who do not use and punctuation and then write on and on and you are busy trying to take a breath and you cannot and it makes your chest want to explode because no full stop or comma or anything. (Bang).

Are they people who are from countries where English is taught at schools?
I've worked with many people who have English as a second language and most of them have excellent English.
Those who have acquired their English by immersion, including British and North American people, tend not to.
The British and North American ones tend to only speak English (and have an annoying habit of using English to mean British) whereas the others speak English as a third or fourth language.

I know someone whose manager got quite intense about them at work. He/She felt they indicated that the person's emails indicated something (slightly critical) they wanted to say, but were not saying, about them. On that basis, I'd be very careful about using them.

Yes. Or where they do flow into one another, but incoherently.

Not sure whether it is correct if they're put in a place where a break makes no sense.

Agree with you about multiple commas: what does it mean??!!! (Ironic use of multiple question and exclamation marks...)

Ah! That rhetorical subtlety was lost on me, I'm afraid!