Ellipsis
Ellipsis, as a figure of speech, is the deliberate omission of a word or phrase that the reader can recover from the surrounding sentence, so it is understood without being repeated.
This page is about ellipsis the figure of speech: leaving out words the reader can supply. It is not the three dots (...), which are a punctuation mark that happens to share the name; there is a short note on those at the end.
She took the first train; her brother, the last.
The second clause has no verb. Took is understood from the first, and the reader supplies it without noticing they have done any work.
How ellipsis works
The effect is speed and a certain dryness. The omission implies that the sentence has better things to do than repeat itself, and it makes the reader an active participant in the line.
- Full: Some editors cut what is weak. Other editors cut what is merely unnecessary.
- Elliptical: Some editors cut what is weak; others, what is merely unnecessary.
It is everywhere in dialogue, because speech is elliptical by nature. Coming? Not tonight. Neither is a grammatical sentence and both are perfectly clear, which is why heavily elliptical dialogue reads as natural and fully grammatical dialogue reads as stilted. It also does quiet work in oblique dialogue, where what a character leaves out is the point, and in subtext.
Ellipsis in a story
The same idea works at the scale of plot. A story leaves out a stretch of time and trusts the reader to fill it: She packed one bag. By Friday she was in Lisbon. Screenplays do it with every cut. The skill is choosing what the audience does not need to see, and a scene that shows every step from the car to the front door usually needs one.
Common mistakes
- The missing word is not quite recoverable. She took the first train; her brothers, the last. The reader must now supply took for a plural subject, and some will stumble. The omitted element should fit exactly.
- Too much at once. Omit the verb and the object and the subject, and the sentence becomes a puzzle. One gap per sentence is plenty in narration.
- Formal dialogue. Characters who never drop a word sound like they are reading. Let them clip their lines.
The punctuation mark called an ellipsis
The three dots mark words cut from a quotation ("It was the best of times ... the age of foolishness") or, in dialogue, a voice that trails off ("I thought you ..."). An interrupted line takes a dash instead. The plural of both meanings is ellipses.
Frequently asked questions
Is ellipsis the same as the three dots?
They share a name. The three dots are a punctuation mark called an ellipsis, used to show words cut from a quotation or a voice trailing off. Ellipsis the figure of speech is leaving words out of a sentence altogether, with no mark at all, because the reader can supply them.
What is an example of ellipsis in a sentence?
'Some people like tea; others, coffee.' The verb 'like' is left out of the second half, and the reader fills it in without noticing.
What is ellipsis in a story or film?
It is leaving out a stretch of events and trusting the audience to fill the gap, such as cutting from a character packing a suitcase to the same character arriving in another country. Every scene cut is a small ellipsis.