Tag Archives: Generation X

Those Gen X… and their use of ellipses

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The Generation X’s ‘casual use of ellipses‘ is something I am… unapologetically guilty of.

It’s not just about leaving something unsaid… the pause often feels better if it’s longer than a comma… and yet a colon or semicolon just doesn’t work as well.

A single sentence sometimes flows better than two… even though there might be a second idea that makes the sentence too disjointed or too long to read in just one go.

And sometimes the stream of consciousness flow of ideas invites the use of an ellipses, a thoughtful, momentary pause, to help the idea along without another kind of punctuation getting in the way… while still keeping the stream flowing despite a change in sentence tense.

And if you are a generation that thinks us old, and wants to tease us about our archaic use of punctuation, there is another Generation X trait that I happen to hold in situations just like this… I don’t care. If you don’t like it… you don’t have to read what I write. Don’t worry… I won’t be offended.

Oh, and for those of you that actually don’t care about how I use ellipses, I do apologize for my overuse of it above. It doesn’t always have to be used.

When the street lights came on

How many of us Gen X kids stayed out until the street lights came on? That was the signal to head hone for bed. Until the street lights came on, all your parents knew about your location was that you were somewhere in the neighbourhood…. somewhere.

Kids today, their parents always know where they are. This isn’t that new. Even us X’ers didn’t let our kids have this freedom. We grew up in an era when news reports started telling us what a bad world we live in. Unsafe. Dangerous for kids.

Now we are locked down in a way that really limits kids freedoms even more. Where are you going? Who are you seeing? Are they all in your small bubble of friends? Coronavirus has locked us all down and limited where we go and who we see.

This is really tough for kids. They don’t have any equivalent experience of being out until the street lights turn on. They don’t have a place to be unsupervised by adults… not to raise hell and cause trouble, just to be kids.

How much of their time is organized. Even fun is organized… soccer practice, dance classes, music lessons, are all put in the calendar. Play is scheduled, like recess and lunch at school, every free moment isn’t really free at all.

I think we need to find ways to give kids some of the freedom we had as kids, when we could stay out, unsupervised, until the street lights came on.