I blame Herb Cain.
Read it aloud in Chris Farley’s “Finger Quote Guy” voice and it’s especially funny.
I’m sorry.
I use ellipses here…but I would never end a sentence with more than one dot.
I mostly find it annoying in messenger applications. I use ellipses, but very specifically to indicate that I haven’t finished what I want to say …
… and want to break the message up (usually due to some software limit or the desire to paragraph). When other people trail off, I too sit there waiting for them to finish.
Does the fact that I get this joke certify me as a geek?
In any case, I agree. Ellipses is plural for ellipse, the section resulting from the non-perpendicular intersection of a plane with a cylinder. The punctuation entity referred to in the OP would be ellipsis marks.
O heppy day, when a “Kat” receives a “brick” from a “Mouse”…
You’ll pry my single en-dash - this one: - - away from me when you pry my hands - cold and dead - off my keyboard. But that’s OK - I don’t use it properly even if I was using the “correct” dash. Eccentric and illiterate - that’s me!
I probably use them more than I should.
I do it to indicate that I could say more on the subject, but you are smart people and already know where I’m going with this, so I won’t bore you. Read my train of thought…
Don’t wait for me to continue.
I tend to use ellipses, but I do believe that I use them appropriately. Usually in the context of an unfinished thought that needs no finishing. What I do catch myself doing (and I’m really trying to break myself of this) is possibly, just maybe, overusing parentheses. If the thought is parenthetical to me, then I just stick in parentheses. If I type up a particularly long response to something, though, I’ll notice that four or five statements are in parentheses.
I’m not sure why the uproar. People who abuse ellipses are simply people who have enjoyed unprotected sex in the last month and their minds are preoccupied with periods.
Naw, cause I get the joke, and I’m the coolest person here.
Well, maybe not the coolest person here, but I’m certainly not a physics geek. Looks like you’re not a geek either. Revel 
(or cry 
)
Well, I can make ellipses with three dots – but what’s the typographic symbol for an epicycle? 
Going into Ubergeek mode here:
Ellipses (uh-LIP-siz) is the plural of “ellipse,” to be sure. But with the alternate pronunciation (ee-LIP-seez) it’s also the plural of ellipsis, with the meanings “something omitted” and “a row of three periods representing material omitted.” The second definition would correspond to your “ellipsis marks.”
“…best of times. It was the worst…” The two series of ellipsis marks in that abridged Dickensian quotation are, in fact, ellipses sensu 2, standing for ellipses sensu 1.
I did a brief stint as a line editor. We called this the “Morse School of Punctuation”, that is, all dots and dashes.
I think there are two main causes.
- The writer is trying NOT to be dominant, or even definite. The written equivalent of all those marvelous conversations where no one has the balls to actually take a position:
What d’you want to do?
I dunno. Maybe we could hang out somewhere…
We could maybe get something to eat?
I guess… Where do you want to go?
I dunno. I had chicken for lunch…
- All the writer ever learned about punctuation is that there ARE rules, but they don’t know exactly what they are. Rather than put in a period or comma or semicolon or dash or whatever–because it might be wrong–they just dribble in dot after dots.
Grrrrrr.
…ha ha! Finally been pitted, in an indirect way, of course… 
Putting in those annoying dots are a bit of a “trademark” of mine, you’ll find them in every single post I’ve made here at the Straightdope, and most of the posts I’ve made every else on line… and I manage to fit them into my titles for threads as well…
SORRY.
Guilty . . . but I pretty much use them when I’m writing in stream-of-consciousness “speech-imitation” style. I’m also guilty of overusing parentheticals, but again, only in informal type, such as the boards or Instant Messages. My e-mails and especially professional and/or business e-mails are properly formatted.
It could be a perpendicular intersection. A circle is just a special case of an ellipse.
This kind of hyperbole is unacceptable…
Yikes. Me too!
With me, it’s more that I have a hard time because I’m not able to bring my real life personality completely into my online conversations. So, the ellipses, and all of my other bad habits take the place of me talking with my hands, grinning, tilting my head in a smart alecky way…Stuff like that
See what I mean?