Grammar Tips Archives - Robbi Sommers Bryant

The Ellipsis

Those three little dots are called an ellipsis (plural: ellipses). The term ellipsis comes from the Greek word meaning “omission,” and that’s just what an ellipsis does—it shows that something has been left out. When you’re quoting someone, you can use an ellipsis to show that you’ve omitted some of their words. For example:

Hamlet asked whether it was “nobler . . . to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles.”

In the sentence above, the words “in the mind” have been omitted from the quote. Occasionally, you might need to leave out part of a quote because it’s irrelevant or makes the quote hard to understand in the context of the sentence. The ellipsis shows that you have left something out.

You can also use an ellipsis to show a pause in speech or that a sentence trails off. This technique doesn’t belong in formal or academic writing, though. You should only use the ellipsis this way in fiction and informal writing. For example:

Andrew, can you, um . . . never mind, I forgot what I was saying. So, do you think we should . . . ? See More.

By Erin Wright

erinwrightwrinting.com

Suspended hyphens sound like troublemakers, don’t they? Before we accuse them of cutting class or being chronically late for work, let’s look at their less-than nefarious definition. We’ll follow up with five guidelines for how to use them in your writing (without getting into mischief).

What Are Suspended Hyphens?

Suspended hyphens, also called suspensive hyphens, replace repeated words, prefixes, or suffixes in two or more compound modifiers.

(Compound modifiers, also called phrasal adjectives,¹ are multiple words that work together to modify a noun. They are usually hyphenated when they appear before the noun they are modifying.)

Here are a couple of examples of suspended hyphenation:

The patients discussed short- and long-term care insurance. (short-term and long-term care)

Local retailers need to hire more full- and part-time employees. (full-time and part-time employees)

Suspended hyphens are easy to identify because they are followed by a space (or prefaced by a space), which makes them look like they are “suspended” in air.

Note that words ending in ly aren’t hyphenated with suspended or regular hyphens.

Five Guidelines for Using Suspended Hyphens

The guidelines below explain how to use suspended hyphens with (1) repeated last words or suffixes in compound modifiers, (2) repeated first words or prefixes in compound modifiers, (3) closed compounds, and (4) numbers. The fifth guideline explains that you always have the option to use regular hyphens, instead. (No really, it’s true.)

1. Use Suspended Hyphens with Repeated Last Words and Suffixes

Suspended hyphens can be used if the last word or suffix repeats in two or more compound modifiers modifying the same noun.²

See More . . .