Writing pet peeves

[Daniel Krispin]

You can't apply the rules of "AIMing" to message boards.  The point of "instant messaging" is for quick chatting purposes, where a majority of the talking takes place in a single sentence at most, and sentence fragments in a large part of it.  Making everything grammatically correct and punctually accurate is pointless, and takes away from the experience.

I disagree, there. I mean, though in casual conversation correct grammar isn't neccessary, it is nicer to speak to someone when they at least attempt it. The same for IM. Personally, I actually find it faster to be grammatically correct in such circumstances. If I'm writing a forum post (or IM), I can probably max out at about 50WPM, and that's with everything being reasonably proper. Actually, I once had the WCIII chatroom server tell me to stop spamming I was writing messages so quickly - and, despite that, I was obeying the language rules.

I know it's not for everyone, and most people now just write in shorthand on the internet, but it does rather annoy me when they write 'u' for you. If one's practiced typing, it takes a fraction of a second longer to write the latter over the former. There is little reason, other than apathy, why the full word cannot be written. It comes down to what one practices. I've written somewhere in the area of 350,000 words in story writing alone in the last three and a half years (including forum posts... probably nearer 800,000), and by attempting my best to remain as correct as I can, it makes it more natural. Admittedly, I come from a family that is generally tends to try for being grammatically correct (my father's a professor, you see, and has to put up with the abysmal grammar of first, second, and even third year arts students.) I still get corrected by my brother for using less for a countable sum (ie. fewer people)... though, having looked it up in the dictionary, it's a marginal complaint, seeing as strictly it's admissable to say it. But anyway, the point is, I'm generally less forgiving than most for apathy in such matters.

[Burning Zeppelin]

Or you could just get a plugin for whichever IM Program you use and just have it to autocorrect you.

[GrayLensman]

People should learn how to use real shorthand instead of Internet garbage.

[Lord J Esq]

The point of "instant messaging" is for quick chatting purposes, where a majority of the talking takes place in a single sentence at most, and sentence fragments in a large part of it.  Making everything grammatically correct and punctually accurate is pointless, and takes away from the experience.

Far from true! In fact, exactly wrong. But in the interest of granting a diversity of opinion, I might suppose that it depends on who you are, and with whom you are talking. (By the way: Ending a sentence with a prep; not necessarily a bad thing--major exceptions are figures of speech and phrases (conf. Churchill) and all lower degrees of conversation formality.) I always use fully proper English on AIM, and I have persuaded several friends over the years of the wisdom of my position.

Degrade the language, and you degrade your own capacity to express the character and contents of your mind. While this may be unnoticeable if your IM conversations are so incoherent as to be of dubious value to begin with, this is not a rebuke of the full power of proper English but of your own quality of discourse.

[PrescitedEntity]

Hope you don't mind if I interject with a few points.

I have no issues with the proper use of sentence fragments - namely, when they're used to convey some feeling, or as part of a distinct and otherwise grammatically correct writing style. It can sometimes add some flourish.

My pet peeve is this:

"......................................................"

That. Long, useless ellipses, usually found in blocks of dialogue. One ellipsis will do, thank you. What's worse is that sometimes, people use it to denote a long pause in conversation, when simply saying, "An uncomfortable silence reigned," or something to that effect, would more than suffice. In fact, it would flow much better. Even more irksome than finding it in dialogue is finding it in narration. In a proper work, there should never be a case in which sentences are broken up...... like that...... It's especially irritating when placed at the end...... Well, one should avoid generalizations like that, but it's generally in bad taste to insert ellipses in that fashion.

The English ellipsis isn't even meant to be used in such a manner! It's a Japanese usage; the English ellipsis is three dots long, and used to indicate an ommission. The Japanese ellipsis is six dots long, sometimes separated into two groups of three, and, admittedly, used to show speechlessness. Still, to me, it's jarring to see them used in anything but quotation and dialogue, and even then, in the latter case, I don't favor them. Besides, it's usually only used in manga in Japan, anyway; one can't really describe a silence in the format. In informal conversation, I don't care either way, but in more formal works, it's my pet peeve.

I do love it when someone misspells the singular form of ellipses as ellipse, when referring to the punctuation mark.

Please don't pick on me for my grammar; English was not my native language, and I still struggle with it from time to time, though it's been several years. English grammar is befuddling, in comparison to Chinese.

[Daniel Krispin]

Here's something I absolutely loathe. And, as a matter of a fact, the person I have seen do it most - and who I am most annoyed at for it - is me. When one puts the negation of a verb after the verb itself. Ie. 'Be not (...)'. Maybe it's just me, but it strikes me as trying to sound falsely formal or old. It's okay sometimes, but for the majority saying 'Do not be (...)' sounds far less assuming. There's certain sentence structures that strike me as sounding like an immature attempt at seeming formal or 'old', and that's one of them.
Note: maybe it's just me, though. Yet what I'm speaking of here is what I'm critical of in my own writing, and what jumps out to me as sounding stupid. I'm far less forgiving of myself than others in that regard.

[Lord J Esq]

What's worse is that sometimes, people use it to denote a long pause in conversation, when simply saying, "An uncomfortable silence reigned," or something to that effect, would more than suffice. In fact, it would flow much better. Even more irksome than finding it in dialogue is finding it in narration. In a proper work, there should never be a case in which sentences are broken up...... like that...... It's especially irritating when placed at the end...... Well, one should avoid generalizations like that, but it's generally in bad taste to insert ellipses in that fashion.

The English ellipsis isn't even meant to be used in such a manner! It's a Japanese usage; the English ellipsis is three dots long, and used to indicate an ommission. The Japanese ellipsis is six dots long, sometimes separated into two groups of three, and, admittedly, used to show speechlessness. Still, to me, it's jarring to see them used in anything but quotation and dialogue, and even then, in the latter case, I don't favor them. Besides, it's usually only used in manga in Japan, anyway; one can't really describe a silence in the format. In informal conversation, I don't care either way, but in more formal works, it's my pet peeve.

As the Compendium's resident English expert, allow me the pleasure of replying to this infamous testimony.

The ellipsis was my favorite grammatical punctuation for many years--actually it still is--and although nowadays I use it somewhat less often--especially in "cafeteria" writing like that which I do here on the Compendium--I understand it well and do want to correct you that the English ellipsis, which is (naturally) the only kind of ellipsis that can be used in English as a legitimate punctuation mark, is quite properly applied not only in the structural mode you describe, but also in the stylistic mode that you allege it should not be applied: as a technique.

It might help to think of these two different modes as out-of-character and in-character. These terms are used in roleplaying; when something is said out-of-character it is understood to be external to the story at hand, as a comment between the various parties involed in the storytelling. Conversely, when something is said in-character it is understood to be behind that fouth wall and within the story itself. As our analogy goes, an out-of-character ellipsis would be used to indicate a literal omission of text  (or other content) presented to the audience, whereas an in-character ellipsis would be used to indicate an event of some kind within the setting described by a segment of text.

Indeed, most of the time you see an ellipsis outside of scholarly papers, business documents, periodicals, and other formal academic literature, it will be in this stylistic form, used like the italics technique to convey additional meaning not through the text itself but through the structure of the text. (Never mind the semantics of presentational versus grammatical structure.) Much like their out-of-character counterparts, these in-character ellipses indicate an omission of some kind, but omissions which are diverse enough that it is more important to focus on the context of a given omission than on the omission itself. In other words, these omissions most often indicate: 1) an open-ended expression or thought; 2) an incomplete expression or thought; 3) a thoughtful pause; 4) a dramatic pause; and there are surely other uses as well which elude me at this moment. Ellipses can be used either amid a sentence or at the end of it; some people apply a fourth period in the latter case but I do not. Anyhow, some examples:

1) An open-ended expression or thought:
Ex. "I wonder what will come of them..."

Use: Perhaps spoken of the bride and groom at a wedding. The ellipsis explicitly invites the audience to continue this line of thinking. Had a period terminated this phrase, its meaning would have been less figurative--and, in this particular case, quite different. To convey the same meaning without an ellipsis would require an additional sentence, or some other disruptive modification that the author might quite understandably want to avoid.

2) An incomplete expression or thought:
Ex. "The secret of life is...is..."

Use: Perhaps spoken by a dying secret agent Zen monk to a comrade. The ellipsis conveys that the expression came to an end before the idea behind it could be fully communicated. In this case the ellipsis serves a double role, indicating both an omission of speech as well as of the meaning of those words. Because of the former role, no other punctuation mark could be substituted here; therefore, any subsequent verbal restatement of the second role played by the ellipsis would be, all else notwithstanding, redundant.

3) A thoughtful pause:
Ex: "This prayer might be said to act as the...guardian of the memory of the dead."

Use: Perhaps a meditation on death. The ellipsis indicates a thoughtful search on the part of the narrator for the most appropriate word, inviting the audience to give a closer inspection to not only the word that is eventually chosen, but also to the reason for taking such care in choosing the right word. Generally, it would be very difficult to convey this kind of meaning more eloquently by bypassing the ellipsis and adding more text. This usage of the ellipsis is very different from the other three.

4) A dramatic pause:
Ex: "I believe that's what they used to call me...ages ago."

Use: Perhaps spoken by an old man at the End of Time who has been found out to be far more than he appeared. The ellipsis indicates an omission in the form of direct silence, or in other words the omission of non-interruption from a passage. No other punctuation mark can be substituted here, but additional text can. However, the dramatic pause is one of the ellipsis' strongest suits. It is this form that is often repeated on its own in IM conversations and elsewhere as the standalone dot-dot-dot, which you conflated with the Japanese ellipsis. Regardless of any such entity, this is a legitimate English usage which serves a clear need on the part of writers and speakers everywhere.

I hope this clarifies your understanding of the ellipsis as a stylistic technique.

I do love it when someone misspells the singular form of ellipses as ellipse, when referring to the punctuation mark.

Please don't pick on me for my grammar; English was not my native language, and I still struggle with it from time to time...

An irony. You "love it" when others use grammar incorrectly, but would rather not be the object of such attention yourself.

Also, note that I truncated your quote, with an ellipsis. This would be an example of the out-of-character ellipsis, symbolizing an omission of text itself rather than something happening inside the text. And there you have it.

Right...?

[PrescitedEntity]

Oh, I thought I made it clear that I don't find it wrong on every occasion. Not at all. Just as sentence fragments can be used to convey a certain feeling that is otherwise unattainable, I acknowledge that ellipses, as you've described, can be used for the same purposes. Also, I noted that they are best used in dialogue; sometimes, there is no substitute, especially to denote a brief, but powerful pause.

3) A thoughtful pause:
Ex: "This prayer might be said to act as the...guardian of the memory of the dead."

[...]The ellipsis indicates a thoughtful search on the part of the narrator for the most appropriate word, inviting the audience to give a closer inspection to not only the word that is eventually chosen, but also to the reason for taking such care in choosing the right word. Generally, it would be very difficult to convey this kind of meaning more eloquently[...]

I assume you're implying the narration is in the first-person, right? There is no need for any such conveyance in objective narration. Also, I would rewrite the sentence as, "The prayer acts as the guardian, perhaps, of the memory of the dead," which, though admittedly subtly different, is in the same spirit. Also, this allows for a clearer emphasis on the noun of choice, which I figured was "guardian", but could be interpreted differently. However, personal styles have the final say here.

I was wrong about the Japanese origin, though they do use it more in that fashion than we. Certainly, media such as comics and games require it more than writing, as they can't show pauses as readily.

I don't mind proper usage of it. I'm lenient on such matters, anyway, as my writing skill is paltry at best. However, when perusing through fanfiction and the like, nothing irks me more than to see this business:

And so, she stood............................... He came to her, and placed a brief kiss on her petal-soft lips, before.............. she turned heel and dashed out the room, leaving billowing dust clouds her wake, and the door swinging, its hinges creaking.................

An otherwise fine passage, ruined by superfluous ellipses. What's worse, many don't seem aware that the ellipsis is only three or six dots in length, and so, overextend them, making them quite hideous to read.

I've had the pleasure of opening an email with voice that had such a thing, and heard it prattle, "dot-dot-dot-dot-dot-dot...", which is penultimately low on acceptability to the ears to, "hyphen-hyphen-hyphen-hyphen...", which I also have received.

An irony. You "love it" when others use grammar incorrectly, but would rather not be the object of such attention yourself.

Ah, but misery loves company. Not the exploitation of one's own, of course - that's hardly ever humorous - but that of others. Does that make me a bad person, then?

Still, if there is any real dispute, you're more likely to be right than I. I'm merely presenting what I know, and I definitely don't have the qualifications to be an expert on the matter.

[Burning Zeppelin]

As the Compendium's resident English expert

Your modesty astounds me.
What is the point of talking "sensibly" with your mates? Sure, my friends are all around fourteen, but what does that matter? IM is meant to be a text rendition of just chatting. Quick, simple and concise, so it would be more like a conversation and less like a lecture. Forums, on the other hand, are meant to be a formal discussion, or even a meeting place, and to get your point across, you must use proper language. I just can't see the point of using long, stretched, gruesome, tedious, satanic words when you can just simply say what you want to say with a shorter version. Oh damn, its not sophisticated! Oh shit, that guy said "can" instead of "may"! Is it just me, or does anyone give a fuck?

[Ramsus]

Kill all the English experts. Then the lawyers!

[Lord J Esq]

3) A thoughtful pause:
Ex: "This prayer might be said to act as the...guardian of the memory of the dead."

[...]The ellipsis indicates a thoughtful search on the part of the narrator for the most appropriate word, inviting the audience to give a closer inspection to not only the word that is eventually chosen, but also to the reason for taking such care in choosing the right word. Generally, it would be very difficult to convey this kind of meaning more eloquently[...]

I assume you're implying the narration is in the first-person, right?

Not quite. Instead, it implies an "embodied" as opposed to a disembodied narrator--a narrator who exists as an entity, and who can interject its own presence from time to time, as opposed to the case where no embodied "narrator" exists and the audience merely peers through words directly in order to see the story. This is not the same as point-of-view (first-person, etc.).

Also, I would rewrite the sentence as, "The prayer acts as the guardian, perhaps, of the memory of the dead," which, though admittedly subtly different, is in the same spirit. Also, this allows for a clearer emphasis on the noun of choice, which I figured was "guardian", but could be interpreted differently. However, personal styles have the final say here.

Your final sentence is the very nub of my gist. I cannot speak for everyone, but I should expect that, mostly, someone who is truly a master of this language will emphasize the importance of expressing an idea in just the right way. For the point under discussion, consider the entire passage from which I yoinked this example:

The origins of the Kaddish are mysterious; angels are said to have brought it down from heaven...

It possesses wonderful power. Truly, if there is any bond strong enough to chain heaven to earth, it is this prayer. It keeps the living together, and forms a bridge to the mysterious realm of the dead. One might almost say that this prayer is...the guardian of the people by whom alone it is uttered; therein lies the warrant of its continuance. Can a people disappear and be annihilated so long as a child remembers its parents?

Because this prayer does not acknowledge death, because it permits the blossom, which has fallen from the tree of humankind, to flower and develop again in the human heart, therefore it possesses sanctifying power.

A close read of the larger context should clearly indicate the important differences between the use of the ellipsis and that of your suggested alternative, "perhaps." This passage is a meditation on death, one of my favorites, on the occasion of a prayer for death, the Kaddish, which concludes most significant Jewish religious services. To eliminate the ellipsis and introduce "perhaps" would change the mood of the passage, and therefore its meaning--and therefore its spirit! For a religious meditation, this is important.

Lay audiences tend not to realize it, but the structure of a passage--the stylistic choices, the diction, the technique--profoundly influences their experience and subsequent perception of the work in question. Sometimes the subtlety is lost; but often it works. To master the language, an author (or orator, etc.) must control not only what is said, but how it is said.

However, when perusing through fanfiction and the like, nothing irks me more than to see this business:

And so, she stood............................... He came to her, and placed a brief kiss on her petal-soft lips, before.............. she turned heel and dashed out the room, leaving billowing dust clouds her wake, and the door swinging, its hinges creaking.................

Agreed.

What's worse, many don't seem aware that the ellipsis is only three or six dots in length, and so, overextend them, making them quite hideous to read.

In English, the ellipsis is only ever three dots in length, or, according to another faction, three dots amid a sentence and four at its terminus. Six is never appropriate, and to the best of my knowledge has only professionally appeared in video game text windows, where a low graphical resolutuion is stretched to fill a large screen. On its own, the ellipsis is used here to indicate a nonplussed state, or an extended silence, or, ironically, an extended omitted dialogue. I would guess--and it is just a guess--that the dots were doubled because in many of these games three dots is small enough as to be visually distracting, therefore diminishing its effectiveness. Extending the dots makes the ellipsis large enough for people to see, but not so different as to suggest anything other than an ellipsis. This spatial problem (and its solution) could also have been solved, occasionally, with creative hard-spacing.

An irony. You "love it" when others use grammar incorrectly, but would rather not be the object of such attention yourself.

Ah, but misery loves company. Not the exploitation of one's own, of course - that's hardly ever humorous - but that of others. Does that make me a bad person, then?

If poor language skills were the worst of our problems, no one would be a bad person. But then again, poor communication might be said to be one of the two chief causes of all conflict in human history.

Incidentally, sometimes even one's own misery can be funny even before the ordeal concludes. Yesterday I knocked a box of cosmetics and toiletries onto my friend's bathroom floor, including a number of items straight into a just-used toilet. Now, you have to understand that I have some fondness for cleanliness and sanitation, so reaching into the toilet to retrieve these wayward things was not an impressive thought. Worse, my right thumb had a sore on it, so I had to reach in with my superior left hand instead. I did so, but, in the words of the great Picard, sometimes we must bow to the absurd. My swearing gave way to genuine laughter, together in the same room with my continuing misery.

As the Compendium's resident English expert

Your modesty astounds me.

Nonsense. In fact, it is modesty that I did not continue to flaunt my credentials. Nobody on the Compendium, possibly excepting our beloved Mr. Krispin, could even come close to the expertise in English I have--and this place features some beautifully articulate people. I do not claim to be an expert in sewing, or football, or medicine. But English is something I know extremely well.

What is the point of talking "sensibly" with your mates? Sure, my friends are all around fourteen, but what does that matter? IM is meant to be a text rendition of just chatting. Quick, simple and concise, so it would be more like a conversation and less like a lecture. Forums, on the other hand, are meant to be a formal discussion, or even a meeting place, and to get your point across, you must use proper language. I just can't see the point of using long, stretched, gruesome, tedious, satanic words when you can just simply say what you want to say with a shorter version. Oh damn, its not sophisticated! Oh shit, that guy said "can" instead of "may"! Is it just me, or does anyone give a fuck?

I think you should not come to the Compendium before your morning coffee. But to address your claim, I can only say that in order to express myself to the best of my ability, I need to use the full structural power of English. If nothing else, broken sentences without punctuation or capitalization are distressingly incoherent, and constitute a distraction. Perhaps you do not have conversations of importance on IM, but I do, and I need my language to undertake them.

Kill all the English experts. Then the lawyers!

I'll be ready for you code-fascists!

[Daniel Krispin]

Lay audiences tend not to realize it, but the structure of a passage--the stylistic choices, the diction, the technique--profoundly influences their experience and subsequent perception of the work in question. Sometimes the subtlety is lost; but often it works. To master the language, an author (or orator, etc.) must control not only what is said, but how it is said.

Wonderfully said. I couldn't agree with you more. And how things are said so very often impacts what is said in return. To neglect that is to neglect half of the art of writing (after all, there is so much more to a picture than what it is - otherwise, Picasso wouldn't be considered worth anything. It's how things are done that are important. And it's like that even in writing.

[PrescitedEntity]

Well, I happen to be one of the aforementioned "lay" audience members. Perhaps I've got an irrational dislike of ellipses? I simply feel that the flow of the narrative is broken when they are inserted. Of course, this is a matter of personal preference.

Incidentally, sometimes even one's own misery can be funny even before the ordeal concludes. Yesterday I knocked a box of cosmetics and toiletries onto my friend's bathroom floor, including a number of items straight into a just-used toilet. Now, you have to understand that I have some fondness for cleanliness and sanitation, so reaching into the toilet to retrieve these wayward things was not an impressive thought. Worse, my right thumb had a sore on it, so I had to reach in with my superior left hand instead. I did so, but, in the words of the great Picard, sometimes we must bow to the absurd. My swearing gave way to genuine laughter, together in the same room with my continuing misery.

Somehow, your description of the event fails to convey the hilarity of it. This speaks more of my tastes, or lack thereof, however; I tend to dislike flowery, formal narrative in this sense, as the wit and meaning tend to fly by me. I'm afraid I'm not of adequate sophistication to appreciate it. My addled mind (what with being the age that I am and all) is hardly equipped for cognizance of the beauty present in literature, which means that you'll have to deal with my ignorance periodically. Hopefully, it won't be too frequently.

[Magus22]

Ahh yes, that reminds me of a pet peeve I might as well share.

Though it really isn't "bad", I dislike having to read a quarter of a page post by someone.

[Lord J Esq]

Ahh yes, that reminds me of a pet peeve I might as well share. Though it really isn't "bad", I dislike having to read a quarter of a page post by someone.

Because I enforce the reading of my posts with tasers and anal pears. Take your garbage elsewhere, 22! Millions of people gave their lives, and billions more lived in squalor for thousands of years, hoping for their children a better world than they themselves would ever know. Spurn the intellect; reject the fruits of literacy--no less a bounty than the entire modern world! What a palaver! What an absolute treat!