It’s not so much the additional periods added to the poor ellipsis that get me, although that on its own is bad enough . . . It’s the cavalier misuse of the ellipsis that turns this elegant and functional item of punctuation into just so many meaningless dots. One sees evidence of this everywhere; advertisements, emails, IM and on and on, ad nauseam. Sentences are crudely festooned with a string of periods indicating, who knows what! The only time for an extra period (i.e. a fourth dot) is when it ends a sentence and the final dot is a full-stop. . . . and don’t get me started on the absence of spaces between the periods!
The following are correct uses of the ellipsis:
1) An unfinished sentence: “I’m hungry! Should we get pizza, Chinese, popcorn . . . ?”
2) An unfinished thought (Not the same thing as an unfinished sentence): “Maybe you should . . . “
3) The intentional omission of words in a sentence: “Well, it’s just six of one . . . “
4) To indicate a pause in speech: “Is that an . . . elephant?”
So, good people . . . let’s spread the word (and the dots!), give the ellipsis back it’s dignity and save my sanity!
