As a rule, I prefer to make fun of myself rather than make fun of others, but in my previous column I departed from my usual approach. I poked a little fun at people who use dots and dashes as default punctuation rather than avail themselves of the full panoply of punctuation marks available to them — which would require their learning the rules of correct punctuation. Such a bother.
In response, Al wrote saying it was "a fun article," but he was hoping there would be "a follow-up on rules of usage for dots and dashes … maybe that's what you have planned."
Well … uh, actually … no, it wasn't — but what a great idea!!! So here — using dashes and … I called them dots, but what's the other name??? … oh, yes, ellipses!!! (or, in the singular, ellipsis!!!) — I give you three guidelines for using ellipses, followed by five guidelines for using dashes for good grammar and — in some instances — for stylistic effect.
Ready???
Use ellipses to indicate (1) omitted text in a direct quotation, as in "I told you not to use all those … dots"; (2) a thoughtful or troubled pause, as in "I … I just can't help myself"; and (3) a trailing off thought, as in "If only I knew the difference between a hyphen and a dash …"
Use dashes to indicate a sudden shift in thought or a break in sentence structure. More specifically, use dashes to:
1. Set off an interruption, as when William Strunk and E.B. White wrote, "His first thought on getting out of bed — if he had any thought at all — was to get back in again."
2. Set off a midsentence phrase that contains a series of items separated by commas, as in "Attending to the five elements of effective writing — purpose, organization, support, expression and correctness — will make you a better writer."