What are ellipsis?

  • (noun): Omission or suppression of parts of words or sentences.
    Synonyms: eclipsis

Ellipsis

Ellipsis (plural ellipses; from the Ancient Greek: ἔλλειψις, élleipsis, "omission" or "falling short") is a series of dots that usually indicate an intentional omission of a word, sentence or whole section from the original text being quoted. An ellipsis can also be used to indicate an unfinished thought or, at the end of a sentence, a trailing off into silence (aposiopesis), example: "But I thought he was . . ." When placed at the beginning or end of a sentence, the ellipsis can also inspire a feeling of melancholy or longing. The ellipsis calls for a slight pause in speech or any form of text, and can be used to suggest a tense or awkward momentary silence.

Read more about Ellipsis.

Some articles on ellipsis:

Cohesion (linguistics) - Ellipsis
... Ellipsis is another cohesive device ... It happens when, after a more specific mention, words are omitted when the phrase needs to be repeated ...
Antecedent-contained Deletion
... Antecedent-contained deletion (= antecedent-contained ellipsis, ACD) is a phenomenon found in contexts containing verb phrase ellipsis and a quantifier ... The ellipsis appears to be contained inside its antecedent, which should result in an infinite regress and thus ungrammaticality ...
The Last September - Motifs - Ellipsis
... The ultimate example of ellipsis of the novel is the mill scene in which Marda Norton is shot ... Corcoran explains the function and effect of ellipsis in the novel The ruined mill is, as it were, the terrible secret of Anglo-Irish history still architecturally articulate on the land, even in its ... on hurrying she and Marda were now well ahead.” That ellipsis is the gap through which along Anglo-Irish history falls the issue is raised, as so often in Bowen, only to be turned ...
Saturnalia (webcomic) - Story
... The story so far Ellipsis is attacked by a mugger, but succeeds in knocking him out ... suspect, insists that the uncooperative Ellipsis act as a witness in the investigation, only to find that the Ampersand database has no record of her existence ... Her privacy compromised, Ellipsis panics and knocks Sysreq out as well, and drags him to PACER headquarters to get help from Nine ...
Ellipsis - Unicode
... In Unicode, apart from the basic ellipsis, other ellipsises are encoded U+2026 … horizontal ellipsis (HTML #8230 hellip) U+22EE ⋮ vertical ellipsis (HTML #8942) U+22EF ⋯ midline ...