Carly's Ramblings Blog - Style

Ellipses. Creation Saturday & Best Thing About This Week

Today's blogs...

Blog City – Day 326

Let's talk about those lovely ellipsis points. Do you think they suggest faltered or fragmented speech? Should they be save for confusion, distress or the big reveal. Do you use them when you write? How about with dialogue, are they best used when one speaker interrupts another?

I use them all the time... or here on WDC mostly. For me they are thinking thoughts. I try to use them sparingly, but as you have mentioned them I feel inclined to over use them.

I checked the grammar guides;

Rule 1. Many writers use an ellipsis whether the omission occurs at the beginning of a sentence, in the middle of a sentence, or between sentences.
A common way to delete the beginning of a sentence is to follow the opening quotation mark with an ellipsis, plus a bracketed capital letter:

Example: "…[A]fter hours of careful thought, we vetoed the bill."

Other writers omit the ellipsis in such cases, feeling the bracketed capital letter gets the point across.

Rule 2. Ellipses can express hesitation, changes of mood, suspense, or thoughts trailing off. Writers also use ellipses to indicate a pause or wavering in an otherwise straightforward sentence.

Examples:
I don't know…I'm not sure.

I quite like them. I think the whole thing is to use them sparingly. I find when I write dialogue I use them to capture the flow of someone's speech pattern. I also use them at the beginning of every blog post.

30 Day Blogging Challenge – Creation Saturday

Create something with this - "Okay, I've got this. After all, it's not the first time a ...

"Okay, I've got this. After all, it's not the first time another cat has come around and pissed off my girl." I moved off into the dark leaving my parents to watch me disappear into the darkness between the houses.

I followed the blood curdling yowls of angry cats. My eyes could see nothing but the white patches of my own cat so I moved to circle her in. As I moved between the two cats a scuffle behind me let me know the black cat took off. Kerry seemed to relax, but only a bit.

"Okay now Kerry. You did good. It's gone. You chased the bad cat away. Let's go on home." As I said this I knelt down so that I was in her full view. She seemed to relax a bit further. I reached out a hand to let her know it was me. My voice and smell seemed to signal the end and she let me move closer to pick her up. I could feel the ripples of tension still holding her body taunt.

I cradled her into my shoulder speaking soft reassurances to her. My own heart settled into a slower pattern. As I walked back into the light from the front porch. I noticed my step father was looking at a damp spot on the concrete front step.

He looked up at my mother and I who were both making sure Kerry was okay and said as he pointed to the spot, "Well, piss on it."

Mom and I looked over, caught his deadpan tone and all of us broke into laughter. The tension slipped away further.

I don't think that black cat ever came back.

This is related to yesterday's prompt in that it was a true story. My cat, Kerry was an indoor cat, but she would defend her territory. She once chased a cat up onto the church roof next door and kept it cornered in. When we came out to get her, the other cat escaped but it still took awhile to get Kerry down as she was not sure how to get back down the tree that had helped her get up there. Food helped.
She also had a tendency to piddle whenever the fight began. We had almost 21 years of good fun with that cat. She was a sweetheart.... most of the time.

Welcome To My Realtity – Week Fifty – Seven

7. What made this week special for you?

This was not a particularly good week. I got the flu. Monday, about twenty after eight in the morning, I started to feel icky. My stomach was feeling mighty wonkie but not enough to be sick, just enough to leave me feeling not good. Muscles began to hurt and my body decided it had had enough. I slept almost the whole day. The one good thing in all that was that I lost three pounds.

Tuesday was a weak day, but by evening I was feeling better so I took myself for a walk over to the shops to buy a few necessary items. It only takes 15 to 20 minutes to walk there... but I think I overdid it, because Wednesday I was feeling less than wonderful again. I canceled my client - until Thursday night - and slept some more.

Thursday gave me another pound lost so that I was able to meet my two week weight loss goal in only one week.

Thursday I did work and was fine except for the issues moved from my tummy into my intestines and I am just starting to feel better from that this morning. I hope this is done now. I don't want to regain what I have lost, but we will see. I guess there is always something good within something not so great.