Ellipsis (was grgr (34): "now everybody---")

[jbor]

MalignD:
>
> mark:
>> << Anyone thought much about P's incontinent sprinkling of ellipsis
>>  everywhere?  I do it myself, I'm afraid....
>>
>> snip
>
> The use of ellipses as a recurrent punctuation probably reached it's apogee
> in the novels of Celine who finds more uses for them then the the two
> described above.
>
> Pynchon in GR, it seems to me, uses them similarly for a variety of purposes;
> there is some body of literature on P's use of various punctuations and
> typefaces, most notably the recurrent movie sprockets (if that's what they in
> fact are).


ellipsis (Gk 'leaving out')   A rhetorical figure in which one or more words
are omitted. In classical and medieval texts ellipses were unmarked, but the
practice of marking them originated in late 16th C. drama as a manifestation
of the imperfections of the voice: the omissions, pauses, and interruptions
fundamental to spoken language. From their inception ellipsis marks were
variable in appearance, and a continuous rule (-), a series of hyphens
(---), or a series of points (...) were all used, depending upon the
resources and inclination of the printer. Asterisks (***) were first
employed to display hiatuses in the printer's copy-text, but as rules and
points came to be used for other forms of omission (such as censorship or
citation) strings of asterisks became interchangeable with alternative forms
of ellipsis marks.

It was not until the late 19th C. that clear distinctions began to be made
between the marks. The dash, or continuous rule, had become the most common
of the symbols, signalling abrupt changes or breaks, whereas points began to
imply a longer, more hesitant pause. Points also became the preferred mark
for indicating omissions from quotations, leaving the asterisk the primary
role of marking footnotes. Such standardization has become increasingly
pervasive throughout the 20th C. due to the uniformity imposed on writers
and printers by the house-styles of large publishing firms, a resulting
dependence on style manuals, and latterly the spread of the word-processor.
These influences have also standardized appearance: hyphens now rarely make
up a rule, dashes are usually one em in length, and an 'ellipsis mark' is
comprised of three points (or four if a full stop is added) rather than the
indiscriminate number of points, rules, or asterisks that previously
signified ellipses.

----------

Grammatical ellipsis is inherent to all language modes and is quite
different to the deliberate use of ellipsis marks in literary narratives for
stylistic effect. Sterne's Tristram Shandy employs quite a repertoire of
ellipsis also, most often signalled by the dash. I think that in both
Pynchon and Sterne the ellipsis marks are used, at least partly, in order to
foreground the inevitable "imperfections of the voice", the intrinsic
incompleteness and rhetoricality of all language utterances, both dialogic
*and* narrative.

best