Quote:
Originally Posted by Ursa major  I wish I'd found the m-dash shortcut earlier. There was a time when I used m-dashes instead of ellipses to indicate interruptions in the dialogue. I could have saved one hyphen for every m-dash inserted. |
I've been saying this quite often in critiques it seems, but if everyone keeps using ellipses for interruptions, then maybe I'm wrong about them?
It was my understanding that an ellipsis has two uses, the first being to indicate omitted text, but the second, often used in prose, is to fade out into silence. Yet I've seen many people use ellipses to indicate the dialogue was interrupted by another character talking over them. I thought that was an improper use of ellipsis? Shouldn't it be closed dashes to indicate interruptions?