December 28, 2011

Kevin’s Rules of Elision Revealed!

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A few days ago I got one of my oddest requests ever: a regular reader wanted to know just what my rules were for using ellipses. As a blogger who quotes other people’s material all the time, I use ellipses a lot, and it’s true that I use them in different ways depending on just what I’ve elided. But there’s method to my madness! And since this is the slowest news week of the year, today I’m giving away my secrets.

And make no mistake: this is not official MoJo style. It’s not AP style. I don’t even know if there are any official-ish rules for indicating that you’ve snipped passages out of quoted material. But here’s how I do it. I expect this to be my most controversial post ever.

What I’m Snipping

 
How I Do It


Example

Entire paragraph

…. at beginning of next paragraph

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness [etc.]

….It was the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five [etc.]

Why I do it: An ellipsis isn’t normally used at the beginning of a paragraph, so this usage makes it extremely obvious that something has been left out. An ellipsis at the end of a paragraph can be missed if you’re reading in a hurry.

I’ve been doing this for ten years now, and as near as I can tell not a single other person has adopted my convention. However, this is the sad fate of many unheralded geniuses, and all I can do is persevere.

Entire sentence

….

Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys’ house….This position of affairs had now lasted three days, and not only the husband and wife themselves, but all the members of their family and household, were painfully conscious of it.

Phrase or short passage within a sentence

[…]

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago […] having little or no money in my purse [etc.]

One or two words, usually for purely grammatical reasons

[]

Original: My friend Dr. Marc likes to say that Democrats are stupid and that Republicans are evil.

Snippet: Democrats are stupid and [] Republicans are evil.

Words at beginning of sentence

…., but no bracket for capital letters

Original: Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo.

Snippet:  ….There was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo.

Why I do it: The ellipsis already indicates that text has been removed, so brackets around the first letter are unnecessary. With the exception of legal texts where absolute precision is paramount, I think using brackets around a single letter (i.e., [T]here) is generally ugly, distracting, and superfluous.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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