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.