Elliptical Sentences

Writing & Grammar: Understanding Elliptical Sentences

by Jennie Ruby
When I counterbalance heard the term elliptical blame, I pictured a sentence that went around in an oblong circle. And that is not farthest from the truth. These sentences do sometimes lay off just where they began. By doing so, they servicing us determine correct pronoun case, decide whether to use than or from, and lighten us from undue wordiness.

The word elliptical actually does not refer to the shape of the sentence, but rather to the impression of ellipsis: leaving something away. In the following examples, the role in square brackets is the part that is left out.

Mentally inserting the omitted lyric back help you choose the correct pronoun:WandG2

The economic downturn moved(p) me more than [it affected] her.

I liked the Cirque de Soleil performance flush more than she [did].

Thinking about the omitted words can overly help with disparate from versus different than. Than works with the elliptical words added:

Michael is taller than Michelle [is tall].

But when we try adding the elliptical wording and it does not work, we require to use the word from:

Incorrect: Wild rice is different than brown rice [is different].

Adding the words is different at the end of this sentence does not work--so we need from and not than.



The correct sentence is this:

Correct: Wild rice is different from brown rice.

In the next example, using an elliptical sentence can save us a lot of words. When you take out the bracketed section in this next type of elliptical sentence, you put in a comma to indicate that words were left out:

Jones is in charge of Marketing, Utz [is in charge of] Advertising, and Brown [is in charge of] Outreach.

Jones is in charge of Marketing; Utz, Advertising; Brown, Outreach.

chance that in the elliptical sentence, the numerate commas had to be upgraded to semicolons once the list items contained commas.

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