Are You a Hostile Punctuator???
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I use ellipses. Maybe I shouldn't....
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OMG I use ellipses all the time! Not in texting but in posts on these online forums.
“Older people tend to use three dots to indicate ‘on and on,’” she says. “Like, ‘You can guess the rest.’”
Not this older person. I always use ellipses to mean something more like "there's more to say here, but I'm not sure what" or "I don't know how to finish this thought so I'll stop here."
Now, based on this article, and some probably overdue reflection, I need to conclude that probably no one interprets my ellipses the way I intend!!!
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In college, I worked for a sleep researcher. In addition to monitoring subjects at night, I also worked part-time doing transcriptions of people's dreams as recorded when they were awakened. It was a funny type of typing because I needed to incorporate grunts, coughs, and pauses. Long pauses became.......drawn out ellipses. I'd start with the normal 3 but then add another period for each 2 seconds of pause.
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There's nothing hostile or in any way incorrect if you use, "[...]," if you use it properly in context.
I didn't spent sixteen years getting an education to be lectured to about punctuation.
