Wednesday, April 4, 2012

E is for... Ellipses



If you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll know I love ellipses. They are the perfect piece of punctuation for when you want a thought to trail off and just hang there. And I often want that effect.

I find I have to go through my manuscripts with a fine toothed comb to weed out rampant ellipses abuse. And I still find there are a lot in the finished product. Sigh....

I just noticed I've hit 200 followers here, so I guess there are a bunch of people who don't mind my flagrant overuse of ellipses. Thanks everyone! I can't believe I have 200 people interested enough to read these rambles.

So, tell me, is there anything you use way too much in your work? Have you tried to train yourself out of it? Did it work?

9 comments:

  1. After my own heart. I love ellipses, to the extent that I must be careful not to overuse the device. Still...(as Shrek would say). Great blog.

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  2. Ellipses are awesome... My overuse devices change. I seem to be addicted to the concept of overusing something. Every time I find one and snip it, it manages to replace itself with something else.

    Kinda silly ^_^

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  3. Oh boy... I'm a totally ellipse abuser. (See what I did there?!) Common comment from my agent in my manuscript's margins: "Um, why is there an ellipse here?"

    Good question. :)

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  4. I'm very guilty of ellipsis overuse. :/

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  5. Haha! The ellipsis is definitely one of my least favorite puncuations. Ick! I feel like I use them a lot while speaking though, if that makes sense ;)

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  6. Three cheers for the ellipsis! I'd rather see overuse of that than, say, em-dashes. :)

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  7. Ellipses can say so much although they are really saying nothing at all.

    My overuse is of the humble comma, I stretch out sentences far too long by putting several too many into them, sometimes.

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  8. This is the second A- Z post I've seen today talking about overuse of ellipses. I am a huge offender also... I just like the way they look. Next to that, I probably have to edit most for excessive adjectives.

    I'm glad I found your blog. I look forward to reading more.

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  9. Elipses and dashes:

    He'd taken everything from her anyway - not that she'd had much in the first place - so she figured she had nothing left to lose.

    I do that allll the time.


    My E

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