You’d think they’d have a shot for this by now. A vaccine given to all potential writers shortly after birth to stave off the onset of those nasty little spots, the ones that make editors want to scratch their eyes out and scream.

I am speaking, of course, of ellipses. Those pesky little dots come in so handy that writers seem to want to toss them onto manuscripts by the handful. Or perhaps it isn’t intentional; they may get sneezed out onto the computer screen by writers allergic to the frustration of being unable to find the perfect transition. Whatever the cause, they seem to be contagious. First one set then another begins to mark up a manuscript. Pretty soon it’s the literary equivalent of a plague.

Writers, please, for the love of your story, just stop. Take your finger off the period key after just one stroke each and every time. Until you can contain your rampaging ellipses it is best not to use them at all.

“But why? They’re so useful…and pretty…and they never hurt anything…”

Wrong.

They hurt your credibility as a writer.

Like all punctuation, ellipses have a proper use, and that use has evolved over the years to become a cue for the reader to read the story in a certain way. Ellipses indicate trailing off. In dialog, they may make sense to show a character’s inability to find the right words or to indicate that he or she has lost the ability or motivation to verbally complete a thought. Use them sparingly and they can be effective. Use them too frequently and your character begins to sound like the sighing heroine of a Victorian romance novel who pauses every three words because her corset is laced too tight and she can’t draw in the breath to speak.

Do not use ellipses at the end of a scene unless you are absolutely certain that there is a grammatically logical reason for them to be there, such as to indicate the POV character’s mind drifting from the present scene into a flashback that is directly caused by the occurrences in the scene right before the ellipses. Remember, there is nothing wrong the perfectly serviceable single period. I promise you, it won’t get lonely without a couple of friends.

As writers, you have a wide world of punctuation at your disposal. Use it effectively and it will support your story without calling attention to itself. Abuse it, and you’d best send your editor some calamine.

Deb is a writer and editor whose work explores the shadowy side of human nature and the alien in the everyday. An editor for a trade magazine by day, by moonlight she becomes Queen of the Books at Apex. She is a graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop, and edits for them when she’s not sculpting, lighting dance shows, or playing with power tools. Her fiction has seen the dark of day in Apex Digest, Shadowed Realms, Fantasy Magazine, and various live readings; she rarely confesses the locations of her nonfiction. Every once in a great while she updates her blog at http://debtaber.livejournal.com. Mostly, she lurks in the Pacific Northwest.