Ellipses...

   The past weeks have been full of editing! There was recently a change up in the managing editors at one of the presses I freelance for, and my goodness, I've edited four books in the last six weeks, in addition to working with my good friend Enrico on his manuscript! It's good to be busy.
   I'm not sure if a certain manuscript that has a repeated flaw makes me oversensitive, but I have a new editing pet peeve that I see everywhere: ellipses.
   Ellipses indicate something that is missing in writing. I remember learning about how to use them in quoted material: if you don't want to include a complete quote, use an ellipsis to indicate where you left words out. (That should not be done to change the meaning of the quote, of course.) However, despite not editing any technical or nonfiction lately, two genres more prone to having cited quotations that could include ellipses, I have been over run with ellipses.
   The following examples are in the first chapter of a book I recently edited (which was a really fantastic read).

  

The dragon-like jaws ripping into the car…the jaws of life…Amy! 

 But because it was wrong. It looked…hollow. Hungry.  

 Something familiar…Dark wooden beams divided the plaster of the low sloping ceiling on one side.   

 If I could just shake the feeling of, well, doom sounded a bit melodramatic but…

Breathe.

The abrupt silence is worse than screaming. I hang upside down…my arm dangles, useless…thoughts, slow and stupid. Smell of hot metal and burnt rubber. Metal taste on tongue. I start to turn…

   Chicago and I have a slight difference in opinion about ellipses in fiction. Chicago accepts ellipses (or suspension points, as they call them) in dialogue to indicate faltering or interrupted speech (13.39). This is physically painful for me to read, and this is coming from a girl who likes obeying rules (grammar rules and otherwise). But I feel like I have a good reason: ellipses in fiction do not communicate anything other than a pause. That's it. A reader sees an ellipses and they understand it as a pause in whatever was happening, whether it be speech, thought, or action.
   But writers! You can do so much better! That pause could be occurring for a million and a half reasons! Is your character out of breath and panting out an answer to questions? Or perhaps the character is thoughtful and is carefully choosing words. Maybe the character is boldly emphasizing his words, slowly and distinctly saying each one for a large crowd to hear. Is it a slight hitch in the conversation or a long, awkward pause? I challenge writers to bypass ellipses in favor of strong, intentional writing that communicates what a character is doing, thinking, feeling, instead of just pausing.
   I'll just leave you with my comment to the author on one more excerpt from the same manuscript as above. It's a good example of what can be done when you replace ellipses with character development.

Amy smiled back, almost reassured. “It looks cozy in here.” She gave my room a critical once over. “I thought with this dark little attic…and dad is so unreasonable…but it feels like home.”[OS1] 

---

 [OS1]Is she saying the first two phrases to herself, quieter? And then the last more loudly to reassure herself and Em that this is a good place for her? This is an example of when the reader may be confused by the ellipses--they don't communicate how Amy is talking, just that she pauses occasionally. Think about rewriting this part to communicate how Amy is saying this line.

My newest project.

     As I hesitantly pushed on the door’s curved wooden handle, a front of warm air deliciously curled around my face—a stark contrast to the zero degree dry air of that early Saturday morning. I glanced back at the man in the car, unsure of what this Enrico character I was supposed to be meeting looked like. When the car-man didn’t look back, I stepped resolutely into the first tobacco shop I’d ever set foot in.

     The Leaf and Bean in the Strip District, with it's rough red lettering announcing it's location, is constructed of dark wood and decorated haphazardly. A dead streetlight hangs from the ceiling near the entrance, ignoring the gently swaying disco ball a few feet behind it. Across from a semi-oval bar protruding from the left wall is a white door with nine glass panes that leads to their outdoor area. A small indoor roof as been constructed over the door, complete with brightly painted wooden pillars to hold it up. The well-used tables and mismatched chairs have come from as many sets as there are pieces of furniture. But it’s dark and warm and smells significantly less of smoke than I’d expected.

     Turning at the sound of the door is an older gentleman with a long, handknit red scarf drooped around his argyle-sweatered shoulders. His white mustache is stained light brown near his mouth from what I can only assume is too many evenings (and apparently mornings) at the Leaf and Bean. His rectangle glasses have almost no rim and are studded with tiny diamonds over the bridge of his nose and at the far corners of his eyes. This is Enrico.

     I want to say he’s the classic Italian with his hospitable insistence that I smoke a cigar, have an espresso, or at the very least let him buy me some orange juice. I finally accept the juice. Truth is, though, I don’t know any Italians, so I’m not sure if Enrico fits the stereotypes or not. He certainly likes his coffee and cigars, the latter of which remind me of sturdy dead leaves that have been rolled into a cigar shape and produce an alarming amount of thick, white smoke. He smokes three of them over the next two hours as we labor through the manuscript he’s written over the past four years—on his phone. There are no discernible paragraphs and lines don't reach across even quarter of the page, making sentences look more like stanzas in a poem, but there is a clear organization, and I get very excited thinking about turning this into a beautiful manuscript that we can both feel proud of. Occasionally our language barrier prevents clear communication on some of the finer points of grammar, but eventually we come to a consensus on most points.

     We get through the first chapter, and he pleads with me to keep his work a secret. I assure him that I make it a point to not discuss unpublished manuscripts that I've edited, and I will honor that commitment here to the strictest degree. He holds his work so close—“I’m very jealous,” he says—that instead of emailing me what he has (all 200+ pages), we will meet every Saturday and work through the complexities of his work until it is completed.

     And with that, here’s to a new editing journey, tobacco shops and all. Clink.