The Mechanics

Good morning to you all.

It's mechanics day and today I am going to talk about the ellipsis (...).

With the current trend in trimming complex sentences into simple ones the ellipsis can be a welcome tool.

Here are some examples (in which you will see that the ellipsis can also be implied without the use of the...):

1. When the children were called to the dinner table they came to the dinner table immediately.
2. Harry Green had more coins in his collection than Thomas had coins in his collection.

In the above examples the sentences can be simplified:

1. When the children were called to the dinner table they came immediately. The words to the dinner table were omitted.
   
2. Harry Green had more coins in his collection than Thomas had in his. The words coins...collection were omitted.

These words can be omitted because this information is already available to the reader earlier in the sentences. If the reader is paying attention they will automatically supply the missing words from the context of the sentence.

This is a great tool because there is no loss of clarity and, as we all know as readers ourselves, repetitive words can make for very dull reading.

We omit information in our conversation with others all the time.

1. Leaving already? instead of Are you leaving already?
   
2. See you later. instead of I will see you later.
   
3. Coming? instead of Are you coming?

When we speak, being formal creates an emotional distance from the listener which, under certain circumstances makes sense, but very rarely.

Sometimes we do use the ... to denote a pause in conversation, the omission of information and even a page break (I use this in children's picture books a lot).

1. Dead! and...never called me mother.
2. Get the...out of here!

These are two examples where ... make sense and definitely add to the sentence.

One mistake that new writers make is that they use the...when they aren't quite sure what else to say or when they assume that the reader will understand what they mean. This is a big no-no!

There are some magazines that have written the ellipsis right out of their style guide saying its overuse has forced them to ban those three lovely dots...

That's unfortunate because they really can be very useful--if used correctly.