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Post by Tone on Jan 10, 2010 20:46:23 GMT
If you were reading "out loud" and reached a point where there occurred an ellipsis (printed as three periods, either with or without the spaces between them), how would you pronounce it?
Bear in mind that it might represent either a pause or an elision, and your "reading-out-loud" should correctly represent its meaning to the listener!
Tone
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Post by suvvern on Jan 11, 2010 0:20:07 GMT
Dot Dot Dot ? And hope the listener guessed the correct meaning ? (Which I know isn't terribly correct or helpful, but that's probably just me being a lazy reader-outer). Alternatively, if it was clear that the ellipsis was there as an elision, maybe say something like "went to town" or whatever appeared to be missed out of the sentence. If it was clearly there as a pause, I might erm, well, pause, take a swig of a conveniently located cup of tea , then carry on reading !
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Post by Dave on Jan 11, 2010 1:34:20 GMT
This is what I wrote on the other forum: The reader needs to be sensitive to the reason for the ellipsis: if it's for a pause (longer than a comma--hey! maybe that one should be a string of commas: ,,, ), then it should be read as such, like the stage directions of a play; if it's for elision (leaving out something that's irrelevant, usually done within a quotation where the transcriber feels it's not necessary to his point of quotation), then it should be skipped over as if it weren't there. I wouldn't say "dot dot dot" or "ellipsis" either. If the speaker being quoted has a speech problem such that the writer feels it's necessary to the story, he may write, "He ... went ... to ... town." For a reader to convey that thought to a listener, he needs to read out loud with pauses. The same goes for a trailing off elision: "Wha..." The reader needs to convey that feeling through inflection, etc. If we're to get technical about the ellipsis of elision, we probably should also put it between square brackets to indicate an edit has taken place. Would you then say, "open square bracket dot dot dot close square bracket"? Would you read out the other punctuation, or use your voice inflection to indicate questions, exclamations, statements, etc.? Sometimes as we read out loud, we may include "quote" Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet "unquote" if that's important to the sense of things. (And I hope no one is using 'air quotes'!) Otherwise, straight dialog will be read without quotation marks. I would read out loud an abbreviation as the full word(s) represented. An initialism would be read as its letters and an acronym as a word. In the case of elision, I don't think we as reader can fill in for the listener that which was left out because, well, it's been left out! The editor should only leave out irrelevant points. It would be totally unfaithful to quote a politician who says, "I will not run for office" as "I will [...] run for office." If we as reader feel it's important for the listener to know that something's missing, we may say that as an aside--but not "dot dot dot"! An entirely different situation arises when the purpose of reading out loud is for transcription, dictation, or a form of proofreading.
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Post by Bertie on Jan 11, 2010 5:37:06 GMT
If one were to use the 'Phonetic Punctuation' of Victor Borge, an ellipsis would be much easier to render than his question mark.
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Post by Dave Miller on Jan 11, 2010 10:02:11 GMT
I don't think I'd make a specific sound to represent an ellipsis (of any type). Rather, I'd pause and/or change the intonation of the preceding word:
Ready, steady ... go! (Pause).
His reply was ... interesting. Pause and then load up the pronunciation of "interesting" with shades of superiority and disdain.
Well, if you don't mind ... Change the intonation of "mind" from the simple clipped version which would be used mid-sentence, to one which itself begins to trail off.
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Post by Tone on Jan 11, 2010 14:59:35 GMT
It was an issue over which I have pondered. My own view is, if a pause then pause (literally). However, if an elision then, to correctly relay the writer's intention, I would tend to (as many people seem to do) actually say "dot, dot, dot".
Dave, >If we're to get technical about the ellipsis of elision, we probably should also put it between square brackets to indicate an edit has taken place.<
But only if it appears as such in quoted text. If the writer is eliding something that he/she considers unnecessary then ordinary (parentheses) curved brackets, surely.
Tone
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Post by Barry on Jan 12, 2010 1:07:10 GMT
I'd do exactly as the Daves have suggested. In narrative writing, the ellipsis is used mostly as an indication to the reader of speech patterns (in various ways) - it's rarely a grammatical/syntatcical/orthographical indicator (as, for example other punctuation marks may be); translating it is simply a matter of working out (from context) what it's indicating, and reproducing it in speech. If it's there to indicate jerky, or pause-filled speech, I might even put in an unspelled sound (an exhalation or inhalation, for example).
The ellipsis in academic texts often has a different function - one that it's probably not even worth trying to pronounce, as it's more a polite convention to indicate extraction from a larger text (or an edit of some kind).
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Post by Geoff on Jan 12, 2010 6:21:22 GMT
Barry, That's the essence of what I was trying to say in my reply of 8 January to Pete on the APS Forum in the thread comma or semi-colon (or even colon)?: Pete said: I see the dash as more dramatic and the ellipsis as more like a petering out. Maybe it's a personal style thing.
My reply: The way I see it, I think the effect is all in way one expresses the statement rather than in analysis of the written text. In that regard, perhaps the dash and the ellipsis achieve much the same result.
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Post by Samantha on Jul 19, 2018 13:35:56 GMT
In video games (Secret of Mana comes to mind as there was an entire town that said "...") you would sometimes have people "say" ....
The best way of describing this is an audible pause. Like a sigh.
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Post by Ceramist on Feb 1, 2022 19:04:07 GMT
To Dave,
You CANNOT “unquote” period. You may “quote” blah,blah,blah “END quote”.
It is not possible to UNquote anyone, ever.
Larger offense than “speaking” an ellipsis!
Sheesh.
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Post by Verbivore on Feb 1, 2022 20:29:36 GMT
Ceramist: You're just a tad late with that comeback – 12 years in fact.
Did you forget your happy pills this morning?
Sheesh!
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Post by Ceramist on Feb 1, 2022 23:45:12 GMT
Since when do dates matter?
Wrong does not become right just because time has passed.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Feb 2, 2022 1:26:02 GMT
Welcome, Ceramist
Of course you may be right: but time can be relevant. I do hope you will become a regular contributor to this forum. We have challenging discussions. One of the issues which we talk about from time to time is the way in which language and usage changes so that, sometimes, wrong does become right or, at least, it becomes increasingly acceptable as idioms change. The quote/unquote idiom has become quite usual for many years, at least in the UK. You may be right to deplore it but I think you are on a hiding to nothing. I deplore the loss of the word “gay“ to describe flags at a carnival but I am afraid it is a lost cause. When I was a lad, a long time ago, LOL meant lots of love. Nowadays, of course, it means laugh out loud. I am afraid I have to acknowledge that things have changed. I like the story of the person sending a letter of condolence following a death and ending it with LOL much to the confusion of recipient.
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Post by Dave Miller on Feb 2, 2022 18:22:10 GMT
I think the problem here is that the speaker is not quoting a text and then unquoting it (which, as Ceramist says, would be impossible).
Rather, by saying "quote" the speaker is alerting the listener/reader to the change in presentation, from direct discourse to quoted text. Then, by saying "unquote", the speaker is announcing the reversion to direct discourse.
Given the title of the thread, it's interesting that the spoken "quote" and "unquote" are themselves ellipses. They're are short for something like "I'm now changing over to quoting mode" and "I'm now UNdoing my changeover to the quoting mode".
My particular bugbear is the pattern wherein people, wanting to make the quote "X", say "quote unquote X". If they've gone over to quotation mode and immediately come back, then "X" must not in fact be being quoted.
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Post by Verbivore on Feb 2, 2022 20:08:59 GMT
[…] My particular bugbear is the pattern wherein people, wanting to make the quote "X", say "quote unquote X". If they've gone over to quotation mode and immediately come back, then "X" must not in fact be being quoted. I'm with you there, Dave. I've had to fix such silliness many times over years of proofing / subediting newspapers.
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