I Just… Really Like Ellipses… A Lot…

Despite my abstinence when it comes to writing in this blog or any type of formal assignment, I must confess that I am addicted to ellipses. Not only is this three-dot set my favorite punctuation mark for stylistic purposes in fiction writing (used scarcely of course... prose is all about the scarcity of what's good), it is also my go-to punctuation mark when I’m texting. The interesting thing about this bias towards ellipses is that, as Mathew J.X. Malady states in his article “What the… “ from Slate, “they don’t generally provide any sort of typing shortcut… ellipses often require more key strikes and time than the alternative punctuation they are intended to replace.” So what is it about ellipses that keep us using them like they are the best option?

To answer this question I would have to agree with Clay Shirky. He is quoted by Malady and basically states that the ellipsis is used in written conversation to create pauses and hesitations that a face-to-face conversation would naturally include. The natural flow that the use of ellipses gives to a text conversation makes me feel more comfortable than I would feel with completely well written statements and proper punctuation. Take the following conversation as an example:

Person 1: Well I’m taking a gap year after high school… getting my grades up and all… do you know how to solve polynomials for x^5?

Person 2: That’s cool… and yeah not really… I barely know what a polynomial is 

Person 1: ahhh crap… that’s fine… I’m just stuck on this one question...

Person 2: Just skip it already… I gave up on math ages ago… made everything better really

Fairly normal, right? The ellipses help transition to different topics of conversation as much as they help the conversation seem real despite the fact that it took place through Facebook messenger with a friend who currently lives in England. Now look at it with periods replacing all the ellipses:

Person 1: Well I’m taking a gap year after high school. Getting my grades up and all. Do you know how to solve polynomials for x^5?

Person 2: That’s cool. And yeah not really. I barely know what a polynomial is. 

Person 1: ahhh crap. That’s fine. I’m just stuck on this one question

Person 2: Just skip it already. I gave up on math ages ago. Made everything better really

Already the conversation sounds choppy and uncomfortable, even cold. The use of proper punctuation gives the conversation a forced tone, almost like a badly written screenplay where the characters don’t quite seem to be actual human beings interacting.

This relates directly to the TED Talk we watched in class (Txting is killing language. JK!!!) in which McWhorter talked about texting and social media not ruining the English language, but simply helping the language evolve to a point where we can write as we speak. For centuries now writing and speaking have been mostly unrelated even when they are considered to be a part of the same language. No one talks like the sentences in a book or even the sentences on this blog post. No one writes formal essays or literary pieces the way they usually talk. This is exactly the point of ellipses in texting and social media: writing as we speak. They give the conversation the flow of natural speech, whereas proper punctuation use would make it sound distant (well, even more distant considering how impersonal texting is anyway) and unnatural, like you are trying to converse as you would write a novel.

This phenomenon of writing how we speak has been growing since quick global communication began, getting stronger and more interactive as our communications systems get faster and faster. In a world of white screens and perfectly geometrical fonts, some personality is important. Through texts and messenger and even email the only way to express this specific personality and tone is through punctuation. 

Human conversation tends to be vague and loose, it tends to change directions constantly and to pause at unexpected moments, it tends to fluctuate and vary… let’s just say conversations can get very messy. I dare you to give me another punctuation mark that can be applied to express any and all of these conversational tendencies through white and blue iMessage bubbles.