The Said and the Unsaid

Remember how in “Pride and Prejudice,” Darcy almost missed his chance at true love by not speaking up in time?

Having fallen for Elizabeth Bennett, pride kept him from declaring his feelings, and Elizabeth, naturally enough, misunderstood his silence as disdain. Fortunately for the outcome of the romance, Mr. Darcy does find his voice on page 150. He stuns the unsuspecting Miss Bennett by blurting in a torrent his love for her, and, after subsequently overcoming half a novel’s worth of impediments, they live happily ever after.

James Brown’s 1986 single, “How Do You Stop?” summed up the risk of silences like Darcy’s: “How do you stop before it’s too late? / You choose, and you lose if you hesitate.”

Sometimes, though, saying nothing actually is the right thing. An entire school of 20th-century philosophy began with the line, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent,” which in plain keypeninsular English means, “If you don’t have words to talk about something, don’t say anything.” Better silence than wrong words, not that that stopped many philosophers, much less the rest of us.

Also unsaid are the comebacks you don’t think of in the heat of an argument. The French call a belated rejoinder an esprit de l’escalier, literally a “staircase witticism.” Haven’t you cursed those devastating replies that only occurred to you as you were headed down the steps to go home from a party? I have. 

Afterwit is the underutilized English word for an esprit de l’escalier. It’s been a comedy staple forever. From Plautus to Oscar Wilde to TV sitcoms, an angry character who’s just stormed out of the room, sputtering, bounces back in through the just-slammed door saying, “And another thing!” Afterwit, whether in disappointment or anger, lurks in the blanks left by words unsaid.

In life’s everyday tragedies off-stage, however, when we don’t say what we should have, there follows a sad, unfinished sentence in a trailing off tone of voice, “Sorry. I meant …” Alas, too late.

On the other hand, experts, both official and self-appointed, don’t hesitate to say that those unsaid words are properly called ellipsis, an innocent enough Greek word that just means “left out.” When you fill in the omitted words, ellipses can be poignant, even heartbreaking. Think of the tears that fall when a sentence begins,

“If only …”

Just to keep things perversely confusing, ellipsis is also the name for the punctuation mark representing the absent words. In everyday keypeninsular English, we call it “dot-dot-dot.”

Have you noticed the proliferation of the 3-dots online lately, too? For our grown-up children, the bizarre tic we Boomers have of peppering text messages with … ’s is an additional irritant to the usual intergenerational friction.

One 30-something complained about a text message from his father.

Dad: We are having family dinner Sunday do u want to come over …

Me: Sure, I’ll be there

Dad: Good ...

As the son commented on Reddit, “I know it’s just how my dad texts, but I can’t help but feel like he’s planning on poisoning me when I read texts like that.”

It does seem cold to end a dinner invitation with “Good … ”

What unpleasantness might be concealed behind the three dots? “Good (just don’t bring your boyfriend),” or “Good (I promise not to yell about your politics).”

It turns out that it’s not just us older folk who are abusing ellipsis marks. People post all kinds of conjectures on social media about the proliferating dot-dot-dots among every age group.

People use the three dots to avoid seeming abrupt when they end a phrase in a text. “OK, bye,” sounds very final, like a breakup, while “OK, bye …” sounds like “Let’s keep in touch.”

Gen Z says the ellipsis mark adds sarcasm. “Like you do not already know the answer ...”

Others explain, “dot-dot-dot at the end of a statement means I’m still thinking about it,” or “…” just means a longer pause than a comma or a period.”

Obviously, for a lot of people, the three dots are the equivalent of an emoji, more icon than punctuation, and … is used to express many different things.

In this, the dot-dot-dot is like the “Person with Folded Hands” emoji, created 15 years ago specifically to represent the Buddhist concept of “namaste,” which is used for “please” and “thank you” in the Japanese cultural tradition. Now the PWFH is used by texters around the world for everything from “I’m praying for you,” “God bless,” “I’m not angry,” “I defer to your wishes,” to “Peace, bro.”

Whatever the ellipsis character once meant, current use online has taken it far from “words omitted here.”

That’s okay with me … no need to preserve everything in amber.

There is the tyranny of dictators, but also the tyranny of the past, when new things are rejected out of hand in favor of what merely used to be.

The early Greek philosopher Zeno didn’t write, so he didn’t have any punctuation issues when he told his students, “We have two ears and one mouth so that we may listen more than we speak.”

If it’s sometimes hard to say enough, more often it’s harder not to say too much.

Maybe dot-dot-dot should be honored as the sign of listening rather than saying everything that comes to mind, and, especially at the end of a doddering column like this, maybe ellipsis isn’t a bad thing at all …

Dan Clouse lives in Lakebay.