In a previous post we dedicated ourselves to presenting you the different stylistic resources based on the addition of words or expressions. Well, now we will continue with other resources based on the opposite, the suppression of elements in sentences.
Somehow, all these resources are based on the idea that “less is more”. And even if your writing style is not based on this rather minimalist principle, perhaps you should know these ideas to write texts in which you have to be concise or there is a limit of words or characters.
That is, the stylistic devices by deletion help us to focus only on the central ideas of our speech, and we choose to discard the additions, collateral ideas and of course the superfluous. The objective is none other than the one that inspires the phrase "what is good if brief, twice as good", a maxim of the Spanish writer B altasar Gracián, a great representative of the baroque current of conceptism together with Francisco de Quevedo.
But let's go back to today's Spanish language, the one that you can write using this type of stylistic devices by suppression. What are they?
The ellipsis. It is about omitting in your sentences one or several words that in principle would be necessary from a grammatical point of view, but that are nevertheless obvious in terms of meaning. We already warned that thisrecourse carries its risks and should not be resorted to if we have doubts as to whether its meaning is understandable. And of course, it wouldn't be okay if our style was too telegraphic.
An example of this resource would be: You will go to London, I will (go) to California.
The adjunct or zeugma. With this complicated and strange name, we are actually presenting a resource that consists of using a word that is linked to two or more members of the entire sentence, and therefore we do not repeat it every time. For example: Carlos is 12 years old, Andrea 10, Víctor 7 and José older than all of them together.
The asyndeton. Another weird word that means that we eliminate the conjunctions in a sentence, in order to give it dynamism. What do we mean? To this: I say nothing; (because) I don't want to be wrong, (and also) I don't feel like talking.
Well, it can be seen that ellipses, adjuncts or asyndetons tend to speed up texts. Something that adds to usually using short phrases, enumerations and even etc and ellipses to save words.
