Celtic asked Lois McMaster Bujold:

Apologies Lois: a miserable failure on trying to be helpful! I thought the ellipses at the end of the first sentence were odd - maybe a missing word? - and had difficulty with the second sentence but, if you're happy, then that's OK. Thanks for the polite reply to my misguided efforts.

Lois McMaster Bujold Original question was here, for the confused: https://www.goodreads.com/questions/2...

(It's always best to put comments on a question in its attendant comment space, or they'll be separated.)

The ellipsis was, as is usual in my and much fiction, and indicator of a trailing off without completion, or a pause in either a speaker's speech or thought-stream, so I don't have to keep putting the clarifying interruptions in stage business -- "Yadda, hadda," he hesitated, "yadda." The hesitations can be for lots of reasons, usually for the speaker/thinker to select the right word, sometimes to read the room, other things in context.

In formal essay and report writing, ellipses are also used to indicate words edited out of material in a quotation -- Yadda yadda ... yadda. Where the missing bits can be either a few words or many sentences.

The first use is more in the nature of a stage direction. The second use is scholarly etiquette. If you've been trained in essay writing, it might be easy to conflate or confuse the two very different functions of this handy punctuation device.

As another general rule of how people read, if something in the writing has confused or discombobulated readers, they are more likely to stumble over whatever comes next, being already dizzied -- even if it's perfectly fine, because their flow-of-attention will be divided between that and whatever they're still chewing over. Sort of a knock-on effect. Which also happens at more macro levels than just sentences, alas.

Ta, L.

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