Mention the word “punctuation,” and words such as “period,” “comma,” “question mark” and “exclamation point” might come to mind.

But thanks to the impeachment inquiry, now the term “ellipsis” has appeared. I did an unscientific survey of family members and friends, ranging in age from 16 to 79.

Of the 25 I surveyed, 18 had heard of the word. Of these, 12 knew what it is and had used it, mostly in writing papers for college classes. The other seven said they had never encountered the word until my inquiry.

When I asked the question of those who had never heard of “ellipsis” and asked them to take a stab at its meaning, some thought it had something to do with “eclipse,” and one even thought it had something to do with the shape “ellipse.”

An “ellipsis” is three dots that show up most often in a sentence to indicate that words, even sentences and paragraphs, inconsequential to the meaning of the sentence, have been omitted.

In scouring the rough draft of the telephone call between President Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, some congressional committee members and journalists picked up on the use of ellipses (the plural of “ellipsis”) several times throughout the document.

Naturally, since there is an abundance of mistrust on both sides, there is a curiosity about what has been left out of the rough draft. An administration spokesman said nothing of importance was omitted; investigators are saying, “OK, if that’s the case, let’s see the official transcript of the call.” Whether the administration decides to release the official details of the call seems unlikely as of this writing.

The key to understand the function of an ellipsis involves the unofficial agreement between writer and reader that whatever the dot-dot-dot represents does not materially change the meaning or the impact of the message.

Here is where we get into that eye of the beholder issue. What the writer might consider of marginal value, the reader might view these omitted words otherwise.

There are also other uses of an ellipsis. One is much more commonly used in informal writing. It serves as a suspension point which is the equivalent of a speaker’s voice trailing off.

An example might be: “So, from my explanation, you now probably understand what I am trying to say. …” (By the way, a period is used before the ellipses when whatever is omitted includes the end of a sentence or as in my example the trail-off dots come at the end of a sentence.

The advent of social media has created an explosion in the use of ellipses, especially since it has become very popular in texting. “Many people use ellipses to signal confusion, disapproval, hesitation, to show more is to come and the expectation of a response when writing in a chat-based application,” according to the online site Literary Devices.

Here are some examples cited:

So … what happened?

Um … I’m not sure that’s true.

… sure.

You went to the restaurant. And … ?

But I thought we were meeting on Tuesday … ?

As for the rough translation of the phone call between the president and Zelensky, Trump said it was “an exact word-for-word transcript of the conversation, taken by very talented stenographers.”

This is unlikely if ellipses are used. White House officials previously had portrayed the document as not a verbatim transcription but rather a summary that closely tracked the president’s words.

Here are the three instances where ellipses are used in the rough translation. In each, Trump is the speaker:

“I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say CrowdStrike … I guess you have one of your wealthy people. … The server, they say Ukraine has it.”

“Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it. … It sounds horrible to me.”

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com