When reading aloud ...

[Alpo]

When someone has put an ellipsis into what they have written, and you are reading it out loud, what do you do when you get to that?

 

I had never really considered that. In the movie Mamma Mia (for those that have not seen the movie, we have a single mother with a grown daughter, and the daughter is attempting to figure out who her father is), the girl has found Mama's diary, and is reading it to her friends.

 

In the diary Mama tells about meeting Bill, and  how cute and sweet and sexy he is, and going up into the woods and ...

 

And when she read it aloud she read that as dot dot dot. She had to explain to her two friends that's what old people used to do, so they wouldn't say things like "screwed each other's eyes out". They would say...

 

And then a couple of days later in the diary we find out that Bill left but she met Frank, and they went to the old barn and dot dot dot.

 

And then a couple days later Frank had left but she met Joe and they went down to the beach and dot dot dot.

 

This leads her to believe that either Bill or Frank or Joe is her father.

 

But she read the ellipsis out loud.

 

I'm watching an episode of NCIS last night. 14th season. Quinn - that would be Kate 3.5 - is telling how she had a wet dream about Gibbs. And now whenever she sees him she can't help but think about the dream and it's really causing trouble with her trying to work with him. But then they are in interrogation and he's reading something the suspect wrote. "So she came up to me and dot dot dot".

 

And she's completely stunned. "You read an ellipsis out loud? You read 'dot dot dot'?" And Gibbs angrily replies, "He WROTE dot dot dot!!"

 

And as she's telling the rest of the team later, "My Uncle Earl used to do that. Now whenever I look at Gibbs I see Uncle Earl, and there is no attraction".

 

So apparently - at least according to the script writer of this episode - you are not supposed to read it out loud. So what does one do?

[Texas Joker]

...

[Matthew Duncan]

How do read out loud the following?

 

”Get out of here!  You hear me?”

 

 Open Quotation Get out of here exclamation mark space You hear me question mark close quotation.

[Pat Riot]

I would just use a strategic pause and facial expressions to show there was more but it isn’t written. 

[Sgt. C.J. Sabre, SASS #46770]

I don't read aloud. My wife looks at me funny enough when I try to sing.

[Cypress Sun]

 

Maybe it's called...read between the lines...

[Subdeacon Joe]

I pause for a bit longer than I do after a period, then resume with a little more emphasis on the next word as an aural clue. 

[Subdeacon Joe]

Hmmmm, I just read the pertinent part to my wife,  how do you read ellipses aloud, and she agreed with me. 

 

Then I read the bit from "Mamma Mia" and she said,  "Now there i would read it as 'dot, dot dot' using a slightly different tone as a sort of vocal indication of the raised eyebrow, nudge,  nudge,  wink, wink that would be in a conversation. "

[Injun Ryder, SASS #36201L]

 

[Alpo]

1 hour ago, Subdeacon Joe said:

Hmmmm, I just read the pertinent part to my wife,  how do you read ellipses aloud, and she agreed with me. 

 

Then I read the bit from "Mamma Mia" and she said,  "Now there i would read it as 'dot, dot dot' using a slightly different tone as a sort of vocal indication of the raised eyebrow, nudge,  nudge,  wink, wink that would be in a conversation. "

That's how the girl did it.

 

"We went back in the woods and then Dot DOT DOT!"

 

And when she read about the second guy and then the third guy, her friends joined in on that Dot DOT DOT, and then they all busted out laughing.