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Spoken equivalent of ... (ellipsis)?

English Language & Usage Asked on August 29, 2021

When skipping part of the sentence or paragraph in a direct quote, it is common to use the ellipsis (…)

There are two ways of misunderstanding a poem … the other to praise it for qualities that it does not possess.

How should the ellipses (skipped part of the quote) be spoken when read out loud or simply during conversation?

Would the reading simply continue without any acknowledgement of the ellipses? If so, in cases where it is important to acknowledge the presence of the skipped part, is there any established norm, or verbal cue to help communicate that part of the quote was skipped?

3 Answers

This is nice. In Portuguese is elipse. In Italian is elisse; omissis is Latin, also used in Portuguese, but out of the "figures of speech" area.

Also, when an ellipsis occurs with a verb, we say "zeugma". When we combine an ellipsis with hyperbole (Google Translate did not help; it is not "hyperbole" as the opposite of euphemism... Well, you can assume hyperbole <=> inversion here), there is syneresis.

And, considering all above, the answer is “no”. When reading aloud, or talking; i.e., using not your thumb and a pen, but your phonetic apparatus (mouth, tongue etc) it is not only impossible (no grammatical rule is able to justify the possibility to reproduce phonetically what does not exist [ellipsis does "skip" any word, actually there is no word, right?]).

The communication goes smoothly due to ideological cohesion (deixis, being more accurate).

Answered by altnonlaedere on August 29, 2021

For me, I might pause, I might carry on without a pause, I might say "dot dot dot" or three short "hmm hmm hmm" to denote that there's an ellipses. For reference, I speak Canadian English, but I hear a lot of Americans doing this too.

Answered by Cat on August 29, 2021

Pausing: Short Pause

Introduce the Skill (10 minutes)

Say: When we talk we do not run all our words together. Instead, we pause, or rest, between some words. The pause may be very short, or the pause may be longer. Pausing helps us divide our sentences into meaningful parts. Pausing helps our listeners understand what we are saying, too. In reading, the punctuation helps us figure out when to pause. Some kinds of punctuations that signal a short pause are a comma, dash, semicolon, colon, and an ellipsis. We take a little break at a comma before reading on. We take a little longer break at a dash, semicolon, colon, or an ellipsis before reading on.

What I find fascinating about this suggestion for reading an ellipsis aloud (as a slightly longer pause) is that it's Lesson 4 in Fifteen Fluency Mini-lessons for Grade 3 Readers (2009) p.12. I'm thinking I should read all the lessons.

The one solution I personally would not adopt is to continue reading with no pause whatsoever (or verbalization of some kind). That is an invitation to miscomprehension. The OP's example would make no sense if read aloud without a pause.

Answered by DjinTonic on August 29, 2021

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