Designer punctuation - Ellipses

I was tweaking my profile on my Web site and was listing the contributions made by the field of engineering to our development. I created a list, which read like this: buildings, roads, bridges, air-conditioning, computers, trains, cars, electricity...

Yes, as the list grew long, I felt like cutting it off by using three dots (known as ellipses) in the end. But before using it, I grew bit suspicious about my intention. Is it correct to use ellipses for such an application? Upon checking, it turned out that my suspicion was correct. You can't!

Ellipses, the three dots (...), can be used only with the following rules:

1. To show that some parts of a quoted material have been omitted. For example:

Normal sentence: He went on to say, "I am ready to learn about ellipses, though I know I am unlikely to use them."

With ellipses: He went on to say, "I am ready to learn about ellipses... unlikely to use them."

If the sentence ends with ellipses, add a period after the ellipses, like this:

He went on to say, "I am ready to learn about ellipses, though I know I am unlikely...."

2. To show a pause or hesitation. This type of use is very popular in scripts for videos and movies.

I have a good news for you, but...will tell you tomorrow.

Let me end here because grammar is such a... dull topic to deal with, read about and think about.

Atul
http://atulmathur.com

Issue trees

Hi,

Imagine a tree being chopped and cut. The small and big branches, with leaves still green and alive, are falling. Even the trunk is not spared; it's in pieces. What have you got now? Yes, the tree is gone, and you're left with the branches, leaves, fruits(?)--all lying together in an untidy pile. The tree used to be so structured and orderly. But now, this heap? It's a total mess. There is no order to it.

The transformation of the tree into a messy heap is a process of going from order to disorder, from clarity to confusion, from structure to non-structure. And this process can be useful for writing, if we just reverse it.

Often, when we want to write a report, a proposal, an article or even an important letter or e-mail, we feel bit confused. Where to start? Where to end? What to cover and in what order? What to leave out? Having faced this situation many times, I feel the prime reason for confusion is that though we roughly know the various issues or points involved, we are not so sure about their flow and order. It's like having a heap of issues, not knowing which one to pick first, what's their relative importance or their logical order. You see the parts, but not the whole. And the way to shed the confusion, you guessed it, is to construct a tree--an issue tree!

Constructing an issue tree involves putting issues in a hierarchical structure, starting with the main issue, then going to sub-issues and then to sub-sub-issues. Once you do that you start seeing the relationships between different issues and their relative importance in the context of whole.

I tried this idea recently when I wrote an article on "project management." Not unexpectedly, I felt daunted by the sheer number of issues involved as PM is a huge subject. My challenge, however, was to overcome the confusion and write an article within 2,000 words. So, I first wrote down all the issues, small or big, that came to my mind without bothering about their possible order in my article. That was like creating a heap of issues. Then, I began constructing an issue tree, which is about going from big to small to smaller issues.

At the top, I put "project management," the trunk! Then came three main branches:

Branch A: characteristics of a project
Branch B: project life cycle
Branch C: project management practices

Next, under branch C, I went one level down and constructed few sub-branches: planning (C1),
control (C2), scope and change management(C3), risk management(C4), leadership and people management(C5).

Finally, to the sub-branch C1 (planning), I attached few sub-sub-branches: Work Breakdown structure, CPM, PERT and PM software tools.

Once the structure was ready, I started feeling much relaxed. I now knew that if I put together the various pieces according to the structure, my article would fall in place. And it did!

God bless the trees! Let no one chop them down. They are a symbol of clarity, structure and order, especially for anyone who is facing a heap of issues.

Atul
http://atulmathur.com