Writing Cloak and Dagger

Ellipses are pretty much my favorite part of writing.  Period.  Period.  Period.  (Get it?)  They are wildly misunderstood and as such have taken on a myriad uses in modern writing, e-mailing, blogging, and texting.  I use them, for example, whenever my brain fails to finish a thought or whenever I wish to indicate a pause intended to allow the point I'm making to sink in to the reader's mind before I abuse them with a poor punchline or a contradictory point.  One of their uses, perhaps even their most official one, is to indicate a truncated quotation.  This is useful and often necessary when quoting a large piece of text.  Abusing it's power to do so, however, is perhaps one of the most dastardly things in writing, especially for anyone pretending to have any intellectual honesty.  

So no surprise we get a prime example from the Clinton campaign on the worst possible employment of ellipses.  

Here is a quote appearing at Hillary's "FactHub" website from Paul Krugman, noted economist and occasional jackass:

      

Krugman adds:  "Just to be clear: I don't regard this as a major issue.  It's a one-time thing, not a matter of principle...Health care reform, on the other hand, could happen, and is very much a long-term issue--so poisoning the well by in effect running against universality, as Obama has, is a much more serious breach."

Cool.  See the ellipses?  Good.  See Krugman make it seem like Obama is running against Universal Healthcare?  Good, but the fact that Krugman is a jackass is not my point here.

Those ellipses are doing a dirty deed.  A very dirty deed.  Here's what the quote looks like without this nefarious little dots:

Krugman adds:  "Just to be clear: I don't regard this as a major issue.  It's a one-time thing, not a matter of principle, especially because everyone knows the gas tax holiday isn't actually going to happen.  Health care reform, on the other hand, could happen, and is very much a long-term issue--so poisoning the well by in effect running against universality, as Obama has, is a much more serious breach."

Yeah.  Convenient those little ellipses. 

This is how the Bush Administration started.  Oh sure, now they just make quotes up completely and put a gun to the head of anyone they want a favorable quote from, but ellipses was their gateway drug.  

Just say NO.  Period.