f/k/a . . .

  I was born a yabut, and it looks like I’m going to die one.  There’s just too much to do to retire any time soon.  Lately, ellipses are the problem — or, more precisely, the misuse of ellipses, omission of ellipses, and the use of deceptively elliptic speech.

• I was reminded to write on this topic yesterday, when I saw Judge Kevin S. Burke’s statement: “[T]oo often the current method of policy disagreement is to take the other guy’s idea, mischaracterize it and announce your profound disagreement and outrage.”   And, I knew it was in the stars this morning to post on it, when the Quote of the Day at May It Please the Court was Mark Twain’s remark “Get your facts first, then you can distort them as much as you please.”

“dotkeyS” “dotkeyS”  So, listen up, quote-benders and word-weasels:  An ellipsis  (according to the American Heritage Dictionary) is “1a. The omission of a word or phrase necessary for a complete syntactical construction but not necessary for understanding. b. An example of such omission.”    Ellipses are not an ethical way to justify a quote that has been taken out of context or stripped of important information or modifiers.  Using an ellipsis allows the skeptical (that is, wise) reader to check up on you.  As Ronald Reagan aptly quipped about the Soviet Union, “Trust, but verify.”

• Again, am I being too cynical?  The Curmudgeon Online says, quoting Robert Benchley, “The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.”

“dotkeySG” Just when did the first lawyer use an ellipsis to show he or she had omitted part of a quote?  Problably, right after he was held in contempt of court for a truncated quote that misled the judge.  Almost immediately, I am sure, the “tactical” advantages of ellipses became apparent to the profession.

Another highly annoying habit that is indefinitely postponing the retirement of Prof Yabut is the use of the elliptic form of speech in general — that is, using a deliberately sparse or obscure style or expression in order to mislead.  That often means leaving out important modifiers from one’s own speech or taking them out of another’s when disagreeing.  Admen, politicians, and lawyers do a lot of this, and lately I’ve seen it in the weblogiverse far too often.

So, here are some representative examples from the “Yeah, but” Man . .  :

• Don’t say “it works” when you mean “it might work” or “I hope it works,” or “it has been known to work.” 
  
  
  
  • And, when your opponent says “it might not work very often,” or “there’s no proof it works,” don’t answer as if he said “it never can work.”
  
  
• When someone says “X is more likely to do Y,” don’t go into a snit and respond as if the quote was “X is likely to do Y.”
  
• Similarly, if a humble editor says “you haven’t shown the connection between a and b,” don’t accuse him of saying “there is no connection between a and b”, and please don’t just keep repeating that the connection exists.
  
• Adverbs and adjectives are very important words — they make lots of statements more honest and truthful, so use them when appropriate.  On the other hand omitting them from a quote or a paraphrase can often be deceptive when trying to counter an argument.

This campaign is not likely to end any time soon.  As Fyodor M. Dostoyevtsky noted, “Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.”  Nor, as Plato knew, is it a pleasant task: “They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth.”  Thus, the Professor has quite a few more semesters ahead of him.