Ellipsis

Ellipsis is a stylistic figure consisting in the deliberate omission of a structurally necessary member of a sentence (most often the predicate) that is easily restored from the context. Ellipsis lends speech dynamism, rapidity and emotional tension, imitating an agitated or colloquial intonation ("We are from the village, and you from the town"). The omission of a word compels the reader to supply it, activating perception and heightening the expressiveness of the utterance. Elliptical constructions are widely represented in folk creativity, in dramatic dialogue and in poetry oriented toward the laconism and energy of the phrase. Ellipsis must be distinguished from aposiopesis, where the sentence breaks off unfinished; in ellipsis, however, the thought is grammatically incomplete but semantically whole.