Punctuation pooh-poohs

[cjsmith]

This? Is not grammatically correct.
Neither? Is this.
It makes prose? Sound whiny and ineffective.
When I do this? Somebody please kick my butt.

Almost every time I see an ellipsis... a comma would be better.
Commas indicate natural pauses in speaking... as this seems to be trying to do.
If it's meant to add emphasis... it's not working.
When I do this... somebody please kick my butt.

Comma splices are another one, each of these should be a sentence, it drives me crazy when I have to read it, I never know if the writer has a point in mind, in fact I usually start to figure they don't, I'm probably guilty of all three of these too sometimes, maybe I should have been a grade-school English teacher, this kind of thing really jumps out at me, when I do this somebody please kick my butt.

I feel better now.

Comments

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

Commas indicate natural pauses in speaking... as this seems to be trying to do.

Those are indicating a DRAMATIC pause in speaking, as opposed to a brief one. You have to have some way to differentiate short vs long pauses. That are it.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

*nod* If it were used occasionally, and if it were used where drama made sense in context, I might even still parse it that way. I've reached the point where my eyes skip over the remainder of a post once I see two or three of those.

ps: Oddly enough, I clicked over to your journal for a moment and I found ellipses! I honestly didn't remember them being there. Those did not trip my Oh Noes Someone Is Trying To Make This Sound Like Earth-Shattering Life-Threatening Delivery meter. Now I don't know why some do and some don't. This requires more ponderment.

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

I thought about it more, and it seems to me that commas aren't even actually pauses - they're more like breaks in emphasis. Phrases separated by commas get emphasized separately from each other, though not as distinctly as the separation of sentences.

I went back and looked too and I have more ellipses than I thought I did! I mean, I know I use them, but there are more than I expected. And yet, they're still not taking over.