Eats, Shoots & Leaves - Lynne Truss [45]
I recently heard of someone studying the ellipsis (or three dots) for a PhD. And, I have to say, I was horrified. The ellipsis is the black hole of the punctuation universe, surely, into which no right-minded person would willingly be sucked, for three years, with no guarantee of a job at the end. But at least when this thesis is complete, it may tell us whether rumours are true, and that Mrs Henry Wood’s “Dead . . . and never called me mother!” (in the stage version of East Lynne) was really the first time it was used. Newspapers sometimes use the ellipsis interchangeably with a dash . . . which can be quite irritating . . . as its proper uses are quite specific, and very few:
1 To indicate words missing . . . from a quoted passage
2 To trail off in an intriguing manner . . .
Which is always a good way to end anything, of course – in an intriguing manner. When you consider the power of erotic suggestion contained in the traditional three-dot chapter ending (“He swept her into his arms. She was powerless to resist. All she knew was, she loved him . . .”), it’s a bit of a comedown for the ellipsis to be used as a sub-species of the dash. Perhaps the final word on the ellipsis should go to Peter Cook in this Pete and Dud sketch from BBC2’s Not Only But Also in 1966. (My memory was that the title of this show contained an ellipsis itself, being Not Only . . . But Also, but in modern references the ellipsis has been removed, which only goes to show you can’t rely on anything any more.) Anyway, Peter Cook’s musing on the significance of the three dots is quite as good a philosophical moment as Tom Stoppard’s critics Moon and Bird-boot in The Real Inspector Hound arguing about whether you can start a play with a pause. Pete is explaining to Dud how a bronzed pilot approaches a woman on a dusty runway in Nevil Shute’s A Town Like Alice – a woman whose perfectly defined “busty substances” have been outlined underneath her frail poplin dress by a shower of rain and then the “tremendous rushing wind” from his propellers:
DUD: What happened after that, Pete?
PETE: Well, the bronzed pilot goes up to her and they walk away, and the chapter ends in three dots.
DUD: What do those three dots mean, Pete?
PETE: Well, in Shute’s hands, three dots can mean anything.
DUD: How’s your father, perhaps?
PETE: When Shute uses three dots it means, “Use your own imagination. Conjure the scene up for yourself.” (Pause) Whenever I see three dots I feel all funny.
* * *
A Little Used Punctuation Mark
One of the most profound things ever said about punctuation came in an old style guide of the Oxford University Press in New York. “If you take hyphens seriously,” it said, “you will surely go mad.” And it’s true. Just look how the little blighter escaped all previous categorisation until I had to hunt it down on its own for this teeny-weeny, hooked-on, after-thought-y chapter. It’s a funny old mark, the hyphen. Always has been. People have argued for its abolition for years: Woodrow Wilson said the hyphen was “the most un-American thing in the world” (note the hyphen required in “un-American”); Churchill said hyphens were “a blemish, to be avoided wherever possible”. Yet there will always be a problem about getting rid of the hyphen: if it’s not extra-marital sex (with a hyphen), it is perhaps extra marital sex, which is quite a different bunch of coconuts. Phrases abound that cry out for hyphens. Those much-invoked examples of the little used car, the superfluous hair remover, the pickled herring merchant, the slow moving traffic and the two hundred odd members of the Conservative Party would all be lost without it.
The name comes from the Greek, as usual. What a lot of words the Greeks had for explaining spatial relationships – for placing round, placing underneath, joining together, cutting off! Lucky for us, otherwise we would have had to call our punctuation marks names like “joiner” and “half a dash” and so on. In this case, the phrase from which we derive the name hyphen means “under one” or “into one” or “together”, so is