Dot, dot, dot…

These days, I seem to end my sentences with an ellipsis more often than I do with a full stop. It’s got me thinking… (there I go again)

The ellipsis has to be my favourite punctuation thingy (yes, that is a technical term). Those three dots say so much without actually saying anything. I only saw about five or six minutes of Mamma Mia before hitting the ‘off’ button (some things are just too girly for a bloke – even one who doesn’t care much for football!), but the thing that struck me the most from the little I saw was the girl reading aloud from her mum’s diary, and the knowing looks on her girlfriends’ faces each time she went, “dot, dot, dot!” You didn’t have to hear what happened next; you just knew!

But there’s more to those three dots than just the “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” element. These days, uncertainty is underrated – even though life constantly throws reminders at us that nothing’s set in stone. Maybe putting three dots at the end of a sentence instead of just one is my subconscious’ way of saying, “We ain’t done here yet, mate. There’s more – look out.”

As much as I’d like to end every statement I make with a firm “this is it and that’s final”, a lot of times that simply is not the case. There’s usually a bit I haven’t been able to write down because I didn’t have the full story, or because the other guy stopped talking and/or drifted off into something else. There’s also a bit of freedom to go in a totally different direction if you so desire. After all, the door has been left open…

So here’s to the open-ended. To the unfinished; to that nagging curiosity to see what’s round the corner. To the dot, dot, dot…