Umberto Eco, from the essay How to Use Suspension Points inside How to Travel with a Salmon & Other Essays
Harcourt, 1994 (org. essays written in Italian between ‘59-‘61)
Also from this book: How to Travel with a Salmon?
Writers use suspension points only at the end of a sentence, to indicate that more could be written on the subject (“and this point could be further elaborated, but…”), or, in the middle of a sentence or between two sentences, to underline the fragmentary nature of a quotation (“Friends … I come to bury Caesar…”). Non-writers use these dots to crave indulgence for a rhetorical figure that they consider perhaps too bold: “He was raging like a … bull.”
A writer is someone determined to extend language beyond its boundaries, and he therefore assumes full responsibility for a metaphor, even a daring one: “The moving waters at their priestlike task / Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores.” Everyone agrees that Keats has allowed his fancy to soar, but at least he makes no apology for that. The non-writer, on the other hand, would have written: “The moving waters at their … priestlike … task/ Of pure … ablution.” As if to say: don’t mind me, I’m only joking.
A writer writes for writers, a non-writer writes for his next-door neighbor or for the manager of the local bank branch, and he fears (often mistakenly) that they would not understand or, in any case, would not forgive his boldness. He uses the dots as a visa: he wants to make a revolution, but with police permission.
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John Keats
Umberto Eco
