Reply to note from "mhchoate" Fri, 13 Jun
2008 16:09:32 -0500
Can someone open a window, please? It's getting awfully stuffy in
here.
It's an informal cyberstyle.
Right. Exactly. Brava, Marge.
I'm sorry, Patricia, but:
3. to mark a reflective pause or hesitation
is a well-recognized, wholly legitimate use of ellipsis points,
although the manuals usually add a caution against overuse. (Bad
Marge!)
Also, to breach a convention doesn't necessarily imply ignorance of
the convention. It may equally imply awareness of the convention.
Writers breach linguistic conventions, advisedly, all the time.
Also, conventions change with time. They... evolve. Nicholson Baker
has a wonderful piece on the history of punctuation -- a review, if
I recall correctly, of M.B. Parkes's coffee table-size book (note
well the title) "Pause and Effect: Punctuation in the West" (GBP
303.56 [$590] at amazon.co.uk). A good read. (The review, I mean.
Wish I had the book.)
In other words:
TEMPORAMUTANTURETNOSMUTAMURINILLIS
P.S. Russian lit is littered (pardon the alliteration) with ellipses
indicating a pause, or hesitation, or rumination -- wistful
rumination, often. Very annoying, that Russian lit.
(Okay, so it's not literally alliteration. So sue me.)