Like - Ellipses
The funny thing about writing is that you develop your own quirks the more you do it. Everyone has them. They’re the little things you do and the phrases you use that make your writing uniquely your own. The ellipsis is a big one for me… I assume I misuse it… Or at the very least, abuse it. But I can’t help it. God forbid I add a little bit of intrigue to a sentence or a paragraph. The ellipsis is wonderful. It creates the cliff for thoughts to hang from. And frankly, despite having so many opinions, I’m often not sure… What if I’m wrong or what if there’s a crucial piece of information I don’t know? An ellipsis keeps the door open. In that way, it’s a particularly social piece of punctuation. It beckons to the reader to keep thinking with a teasing dot dot dot. I once had a boss who hated whenever I used them… But he wan’t a very social guy. Ironically, he wasn’t all that certain either, but my foibles can’t be his… Or can they?
Back in high school, someone (too long ago to remember whether it was a friend or a teacher) went on a long rant about how people misuse semicolons. My response was to avoid them like the plague to avoid getting chastised for improper usage. In order to evict semicolons from my writing, I began using em dashes in earnest and now twenty years later I have created a writing quirk that is almost certainly worse than a few misplaced semicolons!
I think you've hit on something. Though it is a little shocking to discover that you have ever been uncertain about anything... Kind of off brand...