This needs to be settled once and for all. (Yea right)

[Prairie_Seagull]

Last edited Thu Dec 8, 2022, 12:28 PM - Edit history (1)

What the hell does an ellipsis mean when in the thread title unsupported by any other text in the post.

For instance: I think DU is a great place to explore the democratic leaning sphere.
Someone replies: ...

i found a discussion from 2012 about this and the answers were all over the place. Being that this was over 10 years ago, i hoped there was some more "settled law" about this issue. If not maybe a more generally accepted use.

I thought the best place to go would be ask the folks who do this for a living or are at least giving it their best. By the way, Good luck to all.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. Ellipsis posts are like "meh" for people too lazy to type "meh"

(Note 1: I don't do this for a living.)

(Note 2: my dotted titles are very different than this thread topic. If I'm writing a title-only post I add "nt" at the end (for "no text"). But to separate the "nt" from the title you can't use spaces because DU bizarrely collapses all spaces in titles to single spaces. So I put " . . . nt" so that the nt is distinct from the title.)

[Prairie_Seagull]

2. Thank you Mr. La Paz n/t

[Prairie_Seagull]

3. Another question if you don't mind.

So the ellipsis is conditional and strictly related to the post in question.

So what If the post was: FDR was good for America
The reply was: ...

That is clearly not a "meh" thing. Asking for a friend. OK, to not look like an idiot.

Thanks

[Gaugamela]

4. The use of ellipsis can be both formal and informal.

An ellipsis (...) is a set of three periods that indicates the omission of words from quoted material, hesitation, or trailing off in dialogue or train of thought. An ellipsis should have spaces before, between, and after the periods.

https://writingcenter.uagc.edu/ellipses

In your example, the ellipsis would indicate that the sentence continues in the body of the post, but the colon is more suitable for this, and renders the ellipsis redundant.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. Agree colon better for "continues in body". But OP specified bare ellipsis as total title w no body.

[Prairie_Seagull]

8. Thank you Gaugemela n/t

[Bernardo de La Paz]

6. No worries. As to specific example, it is meh as in "So what else is new? Preaching to the choir".nt

[Bernardo de La Paz]

7. I file lone-ellipsis-as-total-post in the "excessive terseness fails" bin. . . . . . nt

[Prairie_Seagull]

9. You are being a good sport. Thanks again.

[imaginary girl]

10. I think of them ...

...as a sort of "good luck with that conversation" kind of remark. Like they think the following responses will be controversial. Not sure if that's accurate, though.