We recently had a thread on how exclamation marks are over-used and not looked upon kindly by many publishers.

Should one be equally frugal when using the ellipsis?

I've noticed i'm using it A LOT recently, because my characters often get into awkward situations, have to talk themselves out of them, pausing a lot in speech to think what to say etc etc

What do you think?

Cheers,

Casey

Personally I think ...looks a tad self-conscious as a piece of punctuation so it ought to be used sparingly for that reason. It also tends to slow a text down if there's a lot of it sprinkled about.

In dialogue, an em dash is more assertive if you want to indicate an unfinished sentence, or you can imply a slight pause by starting a new paragraph, or by inserting a line of description between two spoken sentences. If it's jumbled thoughts you want to convey, again there are other devices you can use, eg repetition and confused sentences.

That's my take, anyway.

or by inserting a line of description between two spoken sentences.

I was trying to construct a similar sentence when I had to go and bake my son's birthday cake instead and -

There is (or should be) a difference between -

What?

- a sentence interrupted by something and one which trails off into...

I suppose I mean nothing. As Lammi says, there are other ways of achieving the same effect. Like '!', I find I use them too much in casual writing - emails, posts - and I think that's because I'm trying to imply something that I don't want to state, but can't be bothered to work out a subtle way of making it obvious what I'm not stating. It doesn't matter in that case, but in fiction I think it can be a too-easy way out.

Emma

Thanks for those comments, Kate you given me some good ideas.
And, i suspect you're right Emma, maybe sometimes ... is a form of laziness. My MC is often having to search for the right words herself to explain complicated emotions to her friends and the ... is just so easy to use.

I looked it up in Hart's Rules, BTW, last night and learnt a few things about how to use it, when it's followed by a capital etc. Plus, if i hadn't picked up that book last night, Kate, i wouldn't have known what an em dash was!

Thanks again.

Casey

Have you ever read Alan Garner's work? When he's rendering a character's speech, he sometimes uses a full stop rather than - or ... to indicate a pause in the middle of a broken sentence. It gives the speech a flatter, more fractured feel. I noticed it particularly in 'Thursbitch'.

No, i haven't, Kate. That sounds interesting, i might try and find that to have a look at. I'm going to have to try and find a way around this because my MC is on a confusing, complicated journey throughout the book and like i said, often struggles to talk about feelings/situations.

So, thanks again.

I am now also wondering, whether the chick/mum lit genre is more forgiving. We discussed this in the exclamation thread as well. I'm presently reading the Sophie Kinsella series and her books are littered with exclamation marks, for example, and she seems to get away with it. I'll have to have a look at her use of the ellipsis.

Casey

You're right; genre may well make a difference - as well, of course, as a writer's individual style.

...!

If you really want to annoy the reader, try using footnotes instead, as in The Amulet of Samurkand by Johnathan Stroud. Very amusing at times but it really hampers the flow of the story. It's like having someone next to you keep nudging you while you're reading.

Colin M

Colin, is this a trend, do you think?

At the risk of upsetting the lovely Emma Barnes from Snowbooks, I'm currently reading Ex Machina by Robert Finn (published by them) and it’s littered with footnotes… and I can't decide whether it’s amusing or irritating. I’m enjoying the book, but this is the first time I can recall seeing footnotes in fiction, so I wonder why it’s happening.

Damn! Another ellipse slipped in there…

Dee

I like the...in conversation and as long as its not overused I don't see why it is a problem. A dash isn't the same at all. People pause in mid conversation why not use it.I have to confess I'd no idea there was a name for it.

Have to agree with Colin re the footnotes in Amulet - they do get irritating!

Yes, as a device it's clever and it is funny but after a while...

Maybe it just comes of wading through too many Arden editions in the past with 3 lines of text to a page of notes?

Sarah

It might be useful to know what an em is. In the days of metal typefaces the 'em' was the width of the letter 'm' in that font. The 'en' was half of the 'em'. It was a way of understanding the sizes of typefaces; so when one wants a dash this would be an em, whereas the en is the hyphen.

You might also want to know that the point size of fonts is the measurement from the top of the ascender to the bottom of the descender in that typeface - examples would be the 'h' and 'y'.

Fonts are described in 'point sizes' and there are 72 points to an inch.

End of lousy and boring lecture.

Len