ShmoopTube

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Ellipses, a la Shmoop. Sometimes, when we’re thinking about something

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really deep or difficult, like nuclear physics or world hunger or the final episode of The

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Sopranos…

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…our minds just need a break. A time-out. A brief pause. And how do we signal that the

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brain train has jumped the tracks, if only for a few moments?

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With an ellipsis <<uh-LIP-sis>>…

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…otherwise known as… dot dot dot. The ellipsis serves two purposes. It can indicate

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that a writer has hit the “Pause” button on his or her thought process…

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…or an ellipsis may mean that words have been omitted from a piece of text.

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Before we dive into the Sea of Examples, however, let’s look at the formatting rules for this

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particular punctuation mark. We can’t just throw dots on a page and call

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the result an ellipsis. Nope.

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That’d be like Julia Child tossing stiffly beaten egg whites into a bowl and calling

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them a soufflé.

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An ellipsis, to be an ellipsis, must possess the following: Three dots. Not two. Not four.

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Three.

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There must be a space between each dot and a space before and after the ellipsis. So,

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when we type an ellipsis, what we’re really typing is…

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…space-dot-space-dot-space-dot-space.

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Also, make sure that the ellipsis, when typed out, stays on one line and doesn’t spread

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to two. Now, how does this punctuation mark work when

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we’re using it to omit words?

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Say the high school football coach provided one hundred words to the school newspaper

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about Friday night’s disaster of a game.

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We have to chisel Coach’s one-hundred-word ramble down to a usable quote. This is where

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the ellipsis comes in handy…

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“Well, the truth is space-dot-space-dot-space-dot-space we didn’t completely suck, although we kind

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of did.”

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See? One hundred words cut down to thirteen. That’s the power of the ellipsis.

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Or what if our English teacher wants to read aloud a five-hundred page essay on why Twilight

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is the worst book ever written? Can’t we trim that down a little?

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“Twilight is space-dot-space-dot-space-dot-space God-awful space-dot-space-dot-space-dot-space

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and should be burned.”

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Once again, the ellipsis does amazing things. We went from tens of thousands of words to

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eight. If the section of text we want to omit follows

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a complete sentence, we plunk down a period at the end of the sentence…

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…and then follow it with space-dot-space-dot-space-dot-space.

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Yes, there are four dots in a row. No, this is not a four-dot ellipsis. It’s just a

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period, followed by an ellipsis, and there happen to be four dots total.

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If the section of text we want to omit ends with a terminal punctuation mark, like an

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exclamation point or a period or a question mark, we do the following…

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…space-dot-space-dot-space-dot-space-terminal punctuation mark.

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For example, if we have the sentence, “Did Billy Bob take the train from Topeka that

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arrived late?”…

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…and we want to snip out the words “that arrived late”…

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…our sentence would then read, “Did Billy Bob take the train from Topeka space-dot-space-dot-space-dot-space-question

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mark.” Finally, there’s one enormous caveat to

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be aware of when it comes to using the omission ellipsis…

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…be careful what gets cut. Trimming away unnecessary words to shorten a quote is one

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thing…

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…and trimming away words that change the meaning of the quote altogether is another.

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Down that path lies trouble and possible legal action.

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As mentioned earlier, the ellipsis can also be used to indicate a pause in a train of

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thought.

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Maybe the writer wants to show that time has passed.

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“Wayne thought about going for a run space-dot-space-dot-space-dot-space but, five hours later, he was still on the

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sofa, watching Honey Boo-Boo.”

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Maybe the writer wants to show that a list is unfinished.

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“Leslie contemplated the ingredients she needed for the cake: flour, sugar, chocolate,

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space-dot-space-dot-space-dot-space” Or perhaps the writer has simply run out of

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dialogue.

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“Dude,” Jack said, “it’s like, you know, space-dot-space-dot-space-dot-space”

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“Yeah, man,” Bill replied. “Yeah, I feel you space-dot-space-dot-space-dot-space”

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While it’s grammatically correct to use an ellipsis to show a break in a train of

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thought, many readers find the practice annoying…

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…like, really, really, really annoying. So, keep the mental break ellipses to a minimum.

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And that’s it for the dot dot dot. Not only does it help us shorten sentences…

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…but it can indicate when we’ve contemplated enough pre-calc for one day space-dot-space-dot-space-dot-space

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