...

[mikepara]

Never used either...

Before I came here. I like MK just hammer out a few full stops to wind the purists up. Smileys are lame but I have used them to soften a criticism or when I feel I can't express my full meaning without a facial expression.

 

[carebear]

Before I came here. I like MK just hammer out a few full stops to wind the purists up. Smileys are lame but I have used them to soften a criticism or when I feel I can't express my full meaning without a facial expression.

Or a tone of voice. Self-deprecating humor or broad sarcasm doesn't translate to the written word without some contextual clues. Rather than having to type "..., carebear said dryly" and such; I'll throw in a (not taking myself seriously) or (oh yeah, I'm serious, not) or (I'm kind of a loser for saying this).

(I have no idea if I used that semi-colon correctly )

 

[BellyTank]

... I'm probably the biggest "...'er" here...

... I only use them because they're cheaper than real letters...


.
.
.
B
T

 

["Doc" Devereux]

I don't use emoticons... I dislike them... But I am guilty... Of using these...

You are William Shatner and I claim my five pounds!

I think of the ellipsis as a tool, nothing more. Sometimes it's a good fit, sometimes not. My problem, you see, is with commas, of which I can be overly fond.

 

[Dinerman]

it's because with posting online, you can't have the tone in your voice. the ellipses help with that.

 

[Naama]

I NEED it actually! You know, I draw comics, and sometimes, I have speech bubbles where I only put "..." in it..... It's very usefull, I tell you!

Naama

 

[maintcoder]

Guilty!

Yeah, I am guilty of (over)using elipsis, dash, parens, commas, and emoticons. I had a boss once refer to me as 'Dr. Comma' (he didn't know that I was aware he nicknamed me that) - but he was a English Lit major in college, so I took it with a grain of salt.

 

[Twitch]

....what's an emoticon?[huh] :eusa_doh:

 

[jamespowers]

Man, its the posterboy for ridalin.

Regards,

J

 

[jamespowers]

Mostly they (elipses) are completely misused. As an avid Celine reader, i'm afraid i fall into the trap.

Yes, smilies are irritating. I find they are generally used in a passive aggressive manner to indicate that the writer thinks the person he's addressing is stupid but doesn't have the guts to say so. This, the most blatant of this type: Seen an AWFUL lot in the OB

bk

Regards,

J

 

[RedShoesGirl]

correct usage ...

Ellipses ... are for when one is quoting another person and there are words left out. with a space before and a space after.

to express a pause or a "duh i can't think of the right word" the correct punctuation is a long dash — shift option hyphen.

most normally ellipses are used in legal documents.

and now you know a tiny bit of grammatical trivia.

off we go now — on the road again ta da lol :rage: [huh] :eusa_clap :

rsg (i didn't read the whole thread so forgive is this is redunt info.) ...

 

[RedPop4]

I am right there with Elaina and Girl Friday on page 2 of this thread.
So much of humor, in our day and time, is sarcasm or really, quite dry. If not punctuated with the emoticon, then it's taken seriously and often deemed an offense rather than the joke it's intended to be.

I know from my time on quite a few boards, hurt feelings and/or fights have resulted from a simple joke that was posted without any extenuating manner.

On occasion I will use the ellipsis in order to trail off. HOWEVER, I often use it as a set up for another poster to come in behind me and complete the joke or complete the thought, almost as if we were speaking.

This internet thing has effectively become the bridge medium in that we are writing, and often write in a bit more complex manner than that in which we speak. However with its immediacy, it's often as if we ARE speaking. When my kids were smaller a couple years ago, they asked me: "Daddy? Why are you ALWAYS on the computer? What are you doing?" Well, fellows, I'm posting on the internet, talking to my friends."

So even now, I get it "Dad? Are you talking to your friends?" "Yes, son, I am."

This is a really fascinating subject now, as I ruminate upon it. I try, like heck, to follow the rules of proper written grammar as best I remember them and I aim to spell correctly as well. But then, I often digress into intentional misspellings and "writing like I talk" in order to be a bit less strait-laced and more conversational because, often, there's a response to our posts almost directly within minutes of posting.

We really are bridging two or more styles of communication and correspondence.

 

[Matt Deckard]

Are you still using yours... ?

 

[DNO]

Yup...pretty addicted to them. Trying to cut down, though.

 

[skyvue]

They seem to have become popular in online communications, mostly, and I have no idea why. I see posts occasionally (not here but on other boards) in which posters use ellipses instead of periods. They end every declarative sentence with an ellipsis.

It boggles the mind.

 

[Gin&Tonics]

I'll use them at the end of a sentence in informal writing, to indicate a sort of trailing-off of the thought, but I prefer to use a dash ( -- ) to highlight a specific point in a sentence. If I do use an ellipse within a sentence, I'll use it correctly -- for example, to indicate that material has been omitted from a quote in the interest of brevity.

I was actually skimming this thread to see if anyone used them correctly, as you mentioned. I've actually used them in exactly that capacity here on FL and other forums where I wished to quote a portion of something another member wrote, but make it obvious that I wasn't attempting to obscure or mis-quote what they had written.

I use them in writing dialogue sometimes to indicate the speaker is trailing off and leaving something unsaid, as you also mentioned. I think it's effective in dialogue, but I try to avoid it anywhere else.

I had a thought as to the reason why the ellipsis has become so popular with the current "online generation". My theory is actually that it originated from video gaming, specifically console based adventure, platform and RPG games from the late NES through to the playstation 1 generation of systems. Those games were in the days before voice-over became commonplace in video games, so the most effective way to express a silence or pause in the dialogue using the least amount of characters (ergo, using less memory in the constrained limits of the earlier gaming systems) was to use an ellipsis. I specifically mentioned adventure and RPG games, because these tended to be much heavier on text dialogue than, for example, fighting games or racing games. Earlier NES titles and those systems that came before tended to have games with minimal to no dialogue, and of course the advent of widespread voice-over acting in games reduced the necessity of using the ellipsis in this manner.

All of us folk who grew up playing video games in this era picked up on this stylistic use of the ellipsis.

 

[William Stratford]

Since online has become a dynamic conversation, more akin to real-life speaking than previous written forms of correspondence, the ellipse allows for the insertion of a pause in speech...especially useful when convenying a euphamism to maintain decorum, but also of use in conveying slight doubt at the certainty of a conclusion...



It entered into the online lexicon around the same time that "Indeed" did (courtesy of Aragorn )

 

[Undertow]

I do my best to use them as they were intended. If I use them online, it's often out of a journalist's habit when quoting someone; i.e. "We should all use an elipses...it's a wonderful tool," to replace "We should all use an elipses because I feel it's a wonderful tool."