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Footnotes: 91 of 388

I was mildly surprised to see DFW use the now familiar … to represent various characters’ inability to respond. Of course, anyone who texts, chats, microblogs, or memes regularly knows the three dots mean a non-response, but Infinite Jest was written in the early 90s.

Was the … already in use online by then? Did David Foster Wallace actually invent the …? Or does the custom date from before the internet? I want to know.

Because if DFW actually coined the usage, then it is probably his most singular achievement.

Without doing any actual research, we can deduce that however it began, the idea for using … to represent someone’s unwillingness or inability to formulate a response stems from the fact that originally the ellipses were meant to represent some text that was missing or left out. In dialogue, it was meant to represent a pause.

Knowing that, it’s quite a leap from there to today’s modern usage of the dot-dot-dot. I would have assumed that it was something that developed organically from online chat, originating from the fact that people had gotten used to seeing a … while waiting to see what someone was typing on the other side. But Infinte Jest is proof that even if he didn’t coin the usage, it at least predates online, real-time communication.

DFW may have been wrong about teleplayers and unification, but he nailed it with the dot-dot-dot.

Vocab Word: Egregulous A neologism, combining egregious and ridiculous.

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