Elliptical Thought

Last night, as servers around the world crashed under the demand, Vladimir Kramnik played the game of his life and retained his World Chess Championship title. Halfway conscious, I found myself meditating on the ellipsis, that enigmatic punctuation mark which looks like three periods in a row: '...'

Why? Because while you're waiting for the next move in a chess game, there are lots of interesting things to read, like "Kasparov says ... d4!? freeing up d5 for a knight and giving Black more space." There, the ellipsis represents that which is already known and hence needs no reiteration.

In fact, that's all the ellipsis should represent. Sadly, as I look through the work my students do, I find that many of them no longer use the ellipsis to indicate 'that which is already known and needs no reiteration'. Rather, they use in to indicate that they're too lazy to complete a sentence and hence require me, the examiner, to do it for them. Haha. Some use it to indicate that they don't know how to complete a thought, but want to con me into doing it for them.

The ellipsis can of course be used to indicate a pregnant pause, or a trailing-off into silence. These uses don't indicate positive meaning, and should therefore be used sparingly, as ways of applying stylistic nuance. In fact, ellipses without obvious interpretation should always be considered attempts to mislead or misdirect.

There is one modern exception, though. It has become acceptable, as far as I can tell, to use the ellipsis as a way of ending a sentence such that it means 'but your mileage may vary' or (to be more exact) 'please draw your own conclusions because they should be obvious and if not, I'm not going to be the one to point it out to you'. Well, such (ab)use can be seen as a symptom of postmodernism, I suppose. Occasionally, I find myself yearning for the days when real men used semicolons...