Punctuation, such as the ellipsis, can convey meaning beyond words. An ellipsis can indicate omitted text, a pause, or fading into silence. It can be represented by three dots, a dash, or asterisks. The reader must decipher its meaning as it can indicate different things. Ellipses are not limited to English and can be used in mathematics to indicate a continuation of a list.
Writers have many tools at their disposal to convey different ideas in their writing, and not all of these tools come in the form of words. Punctuation can often convey as much meaning as words, and can indicate ideas that words sometimes can’t, such as silence, pauses, and emotional cues such as excitement. One such form of punctuation is the ellipsis, which is intended to indicate omitted text, a pause within a sentence, or an idea that fades into silence.
An ellipsis is typically indicated by a series of three dots (…) and can occur anywhere in a sentence, depending on the intended meaning. An ellipse does not always appear as three dots. It can also be indicated by a dash M (–) or three asterisks (***), but the most common form is the three dots (…). This technique led to the colloquial name of the ellipsis, the “dot dot dot.”
Since an ellipsis does not necessarily mean the same thing in all cases of its occurrence, the reader must be responsible for deciphering the meaning of its presence. When inserted into a sentence, an ellipsis can indicate to the reader that one or more words have been omitted, but it can also mean that a silence or pause has been indicated. The true meaning is largely up to the reader to decide. Here is an example:
John flew to… Mexico.
An ellipsis in this sentence may indicate that the specific location in Mexico has been omitted,
John flew to Oaxaca, Mexico.
Or, it may indicate that the speaker of the sentence stopped short of mentioning Mexico, perhaps to think about where John has gone, or perhaps for some other intention, such as hiding John’s specific location in Mexico. In this case, the reader is not provided with enough contextual information to make the determination, but in most cases the reader will have gleaned enough information from previous sentences and paragraphs to decipher what the writer meant using the ellipses.
The ellipsis isn’t limited to writing in English, either. When creating long lists of numbers, mathematicians and students can use an ellipsis to indicate a continuation of the list up to a certain point. For example, counting from tens to 100, one could write the following:
10, 20, 30, …100.
This indicates that the person counting should continue counting from ten thirty to one hundred, but the ellipsis saves space on the page by cutting out what should be obvious to the astute reader.
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