Not sure whether this goes in Cafe Society or here, so please feel free to move it as you see fit.
I’m curious about something I’ve been noticing occasionally lately: is there some obscure rule (or maybe it’s a rule in a non-English speaking culture and it’s being carried over when users write in English, or else kind of like how in some European countries they use the period and comma in numbers in the opposite way they do in the US?) that allows the use of commas as ellipses instead of periods? For example:
Those kittens are cute,and they’re also very active.
I’d have thought this was just wrong (and I still kind of think it is) but I’ve now seen it used in two or three different places, by people who write well otherwise. So I begin to think that there’s possibly something I’m missing here.
Anybody know? And if it’s wrong, anybody know where it came from? It just seems an odd thing to do by accident.
Well, the comma and the period are right next to each other on a keyboard. Very easy to mis-step there. On an iPhone/iPod Touch keyboard they are right next to each other and it’s VERY easy to fat-finger an iPhone keyboard.
On my LG Touch keyboard (a pull-out), . and , are the same key so you have to use the FN key to get to the comma, so there’s no excuses there
Not sure about Android OS and Blackberry phones but I wouldn’t be surprised if they had the same on-screen keyboard layout as the iPhone…
I’d be careful about saying they are wrong. yes there is proper English, that should get you a A on your report card in that subject, then for everything else we have real life, where the purpose of language is to communicate and we have certain characters to do it with.
Sometimes not using language according to proper rules is for effect, sometimes by mistake, there are many such reasons, but as long at the concept is properly conveyed that person gets a A+ in my book
I have a Facebook friend that does this in every post every day, but he uses Uber-ellipses, like this. But he’s just an idiot. I’m embarrassed that we went to the same high school AND college.
I don’t subscribe to that idea. Written language has rules and conventions that are standardized so things mean the same to everyone. It’s like the argument we get here over and over again that if people understand what someone is saying, it doesn’t matter if they use proper English or grammar or punctuation or capitalization. Yeah, it does. Written language is more formal and more standardized than spoken dialects because it needs to be.
And the first person that responds to this post with, “umad?” will have me visiting their house and strewing their garbage all over their yard.
Personally (and this isn’t a disagreement, just an extension of your post), I see a difference in someone eschewing the rules deliberately in order to make a point or provide connotational information and someone eschewing the rules because they don’t know what the rules are in the first place. “umad” is the former (usually), , is the latter.
And the thing is, you can generally tell when it’s one or the other. Picasso knew how to create perspective in art but chose not to. Someone who doesn’t know what perspective is isn’t going to create art that looks like Picasso’s; it’s just going to look like crap.
Yeah, that’s the weird thing. Because the person I first noticed doing this (not a Doper) has a wonderful blog full of really cool posts. Aside from the occasional typo that we all make, her command of the language is great. She’s actually the one who got me thinking about it, because she’s not the type to make errors like that. It’s most certainly not stupidity. And lest you think she does this all the time–she doesn’t use ellipses very often. That’s part of the reason why it stands out so much in the middle of her otherwise grammatically- and mechanically-correct posts, and why I wondered if there’s just some new writing rule I managed to miss.
I don’t know. And I also don’t know why this very board has been overrun the past few months with people who think you put a space before a question mark or exclamation point, but *that’s *been happening too.
Let’s blame 4chan. They’re usually behind this sort of thing, aren’t they?
Sure, but I usually see it from people who aren’t good typists and don’t proofread their work. They’re just stabbing keys in the general area where they think the key they want is and don’t worry about making sure it’s right.
I may have misspoken. I didn’t mean they hit a different key each time; repeating a key three times is simple enough. Just that they pick a key without looking at it. I have seen /// before, too.
This is my theory, honestly. It’s consistent enough in her stuff that it doesn’t seem to be a typo or a proofreading error. The only reason I asked about it at all was that just today I’ve seen two other instances of it from other people (one on the Dope, one in a Facebook comment). It seems to be spreading!
