Even still, no one wants to look like a pushover.
I’d even concede that it may have started out totally innocent, but as a poster that cuts against the grain of the board (not that there’s anything wrong with that!), his trademark sign-off comes off like a snarky stinger, which he probably knows but doesn’t give a shit.
This was fun though. Thanks.
What I was taught, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in my apprentice proofreader days, by a hoary old veteran of the craft, was this: An ellipsis in the middle of text has three dots. An ellipsis ending a sentence has three dots plus a fourth for the period ending the sentence.
Thus: An ellipsis … has three dots. An ellipsis ending a sentence has three dots plus a fourth for the period…
But nobody seems to follow that rule these days, so I don’t bother with it any more.
Really? Why would you use another punctuation that means “full stop”, after a punctuation that indicates a “trail-off” in thought?
Not doubting what you were taught, just seems to be a confliction of what the punctuation is indicating.
Jesus Fucking Christ, it has everything to do with politics. Shodan’s little sign off is a FUCK YOU to all the liberal pussies on this board that disagree with him. He’s practically said as much.
How ironic that you keep asking him why he does this when it’s plain as day why he does. But hey, keep asking if it makes you feel any better.
I stole it for my iPhone email sig. Just so… awesome-ly arrogant.
We will anyway.
Zamboni wheelchairs would be cool, no doubt about that, but they wouldn’t work for curling. Curling ice is not supposed to be smooth. It’s sprayed with water droplets that freeze on contact and create a pebbled surface. Can’t curl without it.
[color=“white”]----|\\\|
----| – |
–( (@)-(@) )
----|-…-|
-------–/
------_/
[/color]
Hence the freeze-ray!
Because an ellipsis is not, in fact, a “‘trailoff’ in thought” (though that is how it is often used in current written communication); it signifies (at least in the context where I learned the rule, which was proofreading legal appellate briefs that often quoted from case law) that a segment of quoted text has been elided. So, an ellipsis of three dots in the middle of a sentence, to signify that something has been cut therefrom; an ellipsis of four dots at the end, to signify that a chunk of text has been snipped from the sentence, and that the sentence itself has ended.
Thus: “Not doubting what you were taught, just seems to be a confliction of … the punctuation…” could also be transcribed as: “Not doubting what you were taught, just seems to be a confliction of […] the punctuation […].”
No doubt this seems fussily hypertechnical, but such a mindset comes with the territory in legal writing. Note, for example, that my editing of your sentence does change its meaning, though very slightly, more as a matter of nuance than anything else; but selective elision in a quotation can radically change its import. Thus it is imperative to inform the court via things like ellipses and “[Emphasis added.]” and so forth that the words it’s reading have been altered in some way from the original context.
I quit the Ellipsis Task Force! The hot-pink vest and cap looked stupid anyway.
But I’m keeping the whistle…
Actually, upon reflection, I want to come back to the “trail-off in thought” aspect of ellipses, because that is a correct usage also, and I shouldn’t have been so dismissive of it; I was back in the legal-editing mindset, a very narrow one indeed. 
For the trail-off – or the trail-in, e.g.,
– as a written reflection of speech patterns, yeh, go ahead and use three dots, or four or five or… heck, as many as the length of the trail you’re transcribing. 
On preview: You can keep the whistle, but you have to wear the vest and cap to blow it.
ETA: And by the way, the plural of Jesus isn’t Jesus’ – it’s Jesuses. 
But ‘Jesuses’ just hurts my eyeses.
Right, that’s it – I’m taking back the vest, the cap, AND the whistle.
Not my whistle, nooooo!
Just came in to say the same thing about “love, yams!!” For some reason, I always thought that was sort of cute.
No man, didn’t you read robot arm’s post? The freeze ray is just going to make that rough ice even frozener. You need to melt that shit with heat. Special Olympics kids on zamboni wheelchairs playing shuffleboard on ice with flame throwers.
If you believe in the Trinity, wouldn’t the plural of Jesus be: God.
Or the Holy (hic!) Spirits?