Tuesday, September 25, 2007

I am a fan of the ellipsis

This may be, in part, why I loved Garden State so damn much. Probably not, I mean, Zach Braff is totally my imaginary boyfriend, and like, how could I not love his work? But I do love it in the end when he says to Samantha...

"This isn't a conversation about this being over. I'm not like, putting a period at the end of this. I'm putting like... an ellipsis on it."

He repents of this quite soon, but I still liked the notion of it. I hate the idea of anything really being irrevocable. I want there to be a chance for anything, to have a little more to say.

And I notice when I look at my posts, just how many of them have ellipsis' (ellipses? ellipsis's?) in them. And how this in effect works out as the verbal equivalent of trailing off, which ironically, i almost never ever do. I like to express complete thoughts. Sometimes, they're a little too complete. Here, let me give you 8 1/2 minutes of exposition you do not need. That was fun wasn't it!?

But I think when I use them in writing perhaps its more of a come hither than a trailing off. I want to entice you with the slightest hint of things to come. And it seems so much more poetic that way. I mean no wonder I love the ellipsis; all the infinite unsaidness of life can be summed up with three little dots...

1 comment:

Not at the moment said...

Which actually is missing a little space.

being off... means that there is a word part missing, indicated by the ...

being offshore, offline could be answers.

what you want is "being off ...", indicating the trailing of as you said. That is an elispis. ;)