Texting Lingo Part I: On the Nature of ...'s

My next few entries will be in regards to texting, and my thoughts on the particulars of the subject. In my current musing, I'm going to discuss the ambiguous nature of the punctuation that has become a part of our daily texting lingo. I'm talking about the infamous "..." Those pesky dots sneak their way into both your sent and received texts, and do you really know exactly what they mean? Let me answer for you, you probably don't. The truth is that the ... is mostly just really ambiguous, and I'm here to straighten out what the ... means and hopefully prevent further ... situations from happening. Before I go on, I must give Kate Manley her credit. This topic is one Kate and myself often discuss, and many of her ideas will probably be listed here. I'm going to go along like they are my own, and expand on them, but just know that half of the stuff is hers. Cool.

First, allow me to clear the air. Does everyone know what the ... is? When I type ..., I mean "dot, dot, dot", but continually typing "dot, dot, dot" is a pain in my ass, so I'm going to write .... from now on. Moving along.

The ... is probably the most irratating piece of punctuation that one could use in their response to a text message or that one could use to tell a tale of epic proportions. Let me give you some examples to illustrate why it is such an angering piece of puncutation.

Susan: So did you and (insert male's name here) smoosh last night?
Catherine: Yeah...

At this point, Susan is thinking to herself, okay, Catherine's assent says that they did it, but her ... says there's more to the story. But should Susan ask what else happened or is Kathryn going to provide more information right away? Or is Kathryn using the ... to signal that something more happened but that she isn't willing to share that information with Susan? Now, Susan must deliberate about what the ... means before responding appropriately to Catherine. Susan may first think, fuck you, Catherine, and decide not to respond to her. However, after closing her phone and tossing it aside, Susan will decide that she cannot bare to not know what happened. She will sigh heavily, resolving to pick up her phone to ask, "And...?" Here Susan is using the ... as both a signal that she wants the rest of the story and as a way of showing contempt for Kathryn's original .... From here their conversation continues as usual.

There is another distempering situation where people use the ... in a dubious manner. That is when two people are in the middle of a heated discussion usually regarding something that is of little importance. Another example will illustrate the evasive manner in which the ... is used, and might I add abused.


Catherine: I just feel like you don't like (insert male name here). Every time I talk about him or bring him with me, you act like you're disgusted by him or something. Do you not like him?

Susan: I mean, he's not my favorite person. I get a bad vibe from him.

Catherine: What gives you a bad vibe?

Susan: I don't know...


Here we can see that Susan is using the ... to avoid saying what is on her mind. In truth, Susan doesn't like Catherine's current beau because she suspects that he is two-timing Catherine. Regardless, Catherine doesn't know how to respond to Susan because the ... says I'm not willing to say exactly how I feel, but it also says that there is definitely more to be said. Catherine sets her phone aside and calls her boyfriend, who may or may not be a douche, to ask him to come over and comfort her.


How could these situations be righted? It's a daunting question, I know, but there is a simple solution to this problem. Instead of using the ... in the first place, just say what you want to say. In our first sample, Catherine could have just responded to Susan with something like, "Yeah, we did it, I'll tell you more about it when I see you in person." Susan won't have to wonder whether Catherine wants to tell her about her nighttime escapades. Instead, she'll just have to anxiously anticipate the telling of Catherine's story. The second scenario is much more difficult because it will undoubtedly be hard for Susan to tell Catherine how she really feels about her man friend. What Susan should do, however, is leave out the evasive ... and tell Catherine how she feels in a diplomatic manner.


I would like to point out that there are times when you can use the .... One instance might be, when you feel you need a pause in your statement that is longer than just a comma. Perhaps you want to say something like, "I don't know what to do...maybe I'll just go and make the best of it." Here your ... is not at all ambiguous. It clearly indicates that you are not sure of what you want to do, and so you are hesitating before you express a solution to your predicament. Another time you can use the ... is if you want to trail off at the end of what you are saying in order to insinuate something that you feel may be inappropriate to type outloud. For example, you may be talking to a potential mate, and say something like, "Well, we could go out to dinner, or maybe we could just hang out at home. Order food and watch a movie or something..." In this case, the texter and textee both know what that "or something..." means, but it seems crude to say it outloud. The ... alludes to something else, and both parties know what that something else is.

There it is folks. My musings on the .... Please let me know if you have any thoughts that you'd like to share about your experiences with the ...

Stay tuned for the rest of my series on texting lingo. Next time I'll be discussing the hidden meanings of emoticons.