Another rant on punctuation? It’s more common than you think.

That’s right y’all I’m talking about the three periods in a row that insinuate a trailing off, an omission, a “to be continued,” perhaps even a moment of suspense…?

I may be young and not from the olden days but I consider myself pretty knowledgeable when it comes to the implications that an ellipses evokes. In screenwriting it can be a hesitation or when a character wants someone to finish their… pie.

So imagine my surprise when I come across this message and have no idea what to make of it:

Conclusion #1

My first thought is to interpret it as suggestive. Like when you answer the door and it’s the guy your roommate has been crushing on but he says he’s “here to fix the printer.” So, you lead him to your roommates room where the printer just so happens to live. And before you leave you say “ok, well you two have fun… fixing the printer ;)” and then you shut the door and run to your room to put on your noise-cancelling headphones.

But considering this gift card was bequeathed to me by my supervisor and there has been no foreplay whatsoever up until this point, I am led to believe he did not mean to use the ellipses is this way.

Conclusion B

My coworker was typing the message, lost his train of thought, typed the ellipses as a placeholder, finally thought of the word he was looking for, forgot he was typing on a computer that allows you to delete previously typed words, and sent that bad boy straight to my inbox.

He’s like Ariel except for he’s a man— not a merman— and instead of singing about feet he’s singing about that hot brown.

The Final Conclusion

Maybe I’m reading it all wrong and what I thought was a gesture of goodwill between office comrades is actually a gauntlet being thrown. It’s like a threat. Like “enjoy… the coffee you basic-ass bitch!” In which case to him I say: oh. I will. Enjoy it. The coffee, I mean. Because I’m going to use the gift card to buy coffee and then put poison in it and then give it to you and then you’ll drink it. So it will, in fact, be you, sir, who enjoys… the coffee.

Until next time

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Lesson: Mercury is in retrograde and Mama is feeling it. I’ve been all sorts of out of wack. Even in normal circumstances when I am in wack I have trouble reading social cues so until October 18 when Mercury returns to prograde expect a lot less of me in social interactions, both physically but also mentally.