Re: Elipsis - elipses? - those dots
Karen R. writes:
>>> Personally, if you use elipses (elipsis?) more than once in a book, you run the risk of having your character sound inane, idiotic, helpless, and weak. <<<
The risk? I may WANT my character to sound inane, idiotic, helpless, and weak. I don't want my main character coming off that way, but I may need a minor character to sound hesitant and unsure of himself.
Punctuation is a tool. I wouldn't use a jackhammer to remove putty from a window pane, but I would use one to remove an old cement step. The complexity and structure of the story dictates punctuation. You'd have a tough time selling a literary story which only used simple punctuation marks. Readers of literary fiction know what to do when they encounter a semicolon, ellipsis, or dash, and they don't scream when they encounter parenthesis. They expect writers to use a variety of punctuation marks.
If we, as writers, only needed periods, commas, and question marks, the other punctuation marks wouldn't exist. This goes for the exclamation mark as well. There's nothing wrong with an exclamation mark, as long as it's at the end of an exclamation. "Screw you.", "Screw you!", and "Screw ... you." have different intensities and differ in emphasis. Making that distinction is part of a writer's job description.