Celebrate the solar eclipse with some of the best and worst ellipses in literature (and life).

People around the world are getting ready for the total solar eclipse next Monday, April 8th. I secured a pair of glasses last month, since the last time there was a solar eclipse in New York, I had to borrow a pair of viewing glasses from some teens in the park, which was an experience that was as haunting and humbling as the eclipse itself. I've also been thinking about the grammatical equivalent of the eclipse: the ellipsis, which obscures like its celestial sibling. In celebration of things concealed, here are some of my favorite and least favorite ellipses… Langston Hughes' “Dream Variations” The ellipsis is all over poetry, but one of my favorites is Langston Hughe's striking ellipsis in the second stanza of “Dream Variations,” pausing and elongating before the final lines: To fling my arms wide In the face of the sun, Dance! Whirl! Whirl! Till the quick day is done. Rest at pale evening . . . A tall, slim tree . . . Night coming tenderly Black like me. Terence's Andria , translated in 1588 by Maurice Kyffin Cambridge's Dr. Anne Toner has found what she believes to be the earliest print use of an ellipsis in an English translation of a Roman play. I won't attempt to transcribe the Gothic printing, but it's worth checking out the translator's innovation: rendering an interruption as an ellipsis of four dashes. It's a clever shorthand to transcribe the way we speak onto the page, and an old example of the literary power of how, as Dr. Toner writes, “not saying something often says it better.” George Lucas' Star Wars The opening title card—“A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”—is one of the great uses of an ellipsis. Preceding John Williams' booming score, the punctuation is a pause that transports us from the ten introductory words of exposition into the world of the film. The ominous text message Whether it's a tech-phobic family member accidentally turning a backyard update into a horror story (“that bluejay has returned…”), a date ruining your day (“so…”), or a […]