Did Mormon Know Elipsis Writring?

Recently we received a comment from a reader about our past articles on elliptical and ellipsis writing in the Book of Mormon and that Mormon might have been using that abbreviated writing when he said “from the east to the west sea,” meaning “from the east sea to the west sea.” The reader thought that Mormon would not have known about ellipsis writing and did not use elliptical writing because they did not know what it was.
    It should be noted, that ellipsis writing has been around for a very long time—originally from the Ancient Greek: ἔλλειψις, élleipsis, meaning "omission" or "falling short." Today, it is formalized by using three, short dots ("…") in a sentence, i.e., “from the east…to the west sea.” However, the dots are not necessary, and apply generally to several omitted words, especially in a quote: “Lehi said the land was promised…(to him and his posterity) forever.” Often such elipses are used to indicate that a quotation has been condensed for space, brevity or relevance.

In Mormon’s case, and for anyone who has ever engraved words on metal, the idea of brevity is often very desirable. Repeating thoughts over and over again is unnecessary in lengthy writing, and the concept has been around for millennia. Such absence of a word or series of words typically indicates an intentional omission of a word, sentence, or whole section from a text without altering its original meaning.
    Mormon’s “from the east to the west sea,” is certainly understandable to anyone not trying to promote a pre-determined idea. Mormon was describing the land occupied by the Lamanites and that occupied by the Nephites and how they fit together. “from the east…” would have had a certain meaning to him, and since he was trying to convey that meaning to his future reader, he would not have left the “east” unnamed if it had been anything other than what he had been describing, i.e., the “east sea.”
    As an example, Nephi uses this ellipsis writing when he stated: “And it came to pass that as he read, he was filled with the Spirit of the Lord” (1 Nephi 1:12). As he read what? To understand this, the earlier comment need to be read: “And they came down and went forth upon the face of the earth; and the first came and stood before my father, and gave unto him a book, and bade him that he should read. And it came to pass that as he read, he was filled with the Spirit of the Lord” (1 Nephi 11:12, emphasis added). Obviously, when understanding the complete thought as Nephi wrote it, it makes sense that he did not repeat “the book” a second time. It was unnecessary.
    Therefore, the ellipsis is seen in Nephi leaving out the second “book,” i.e., “And it came to pass that as he read the book, he was filled with the Spirit of the Lord.”
    In another instance, Nephi clearly uses elliptical writing:
    “Behold, I make an abridgment of the record of my father, upon plates which I have made with mine own hands; wherefore, after I have abridged the record of my father then will I make an account of mine own life” (1 Nephi 1:17).

Non-elliptical writing would read: “Behold, I make an abridgment of the record of my father, upon plates which I have made with mine own hands; wherefore, after I have abridged the record of my father [on the plates] then will I make an account of mine own life [on the plates]”
    And again in: “And thou art like unto our father, led away by the foolish imaginations of his heart” (1 Nephi 17:20); instead of “And thou art like unto our father, who is led away by the foolish imaginations of his heart.”
    At the same time, we need to keep in mind, and it seems likely that that Mormon “abbreviated” his writing from time to time since he was engraving on metal, a very tedious and difficult job since a stylus does not have an eraser. And when a mistake was made, it took three or four additional words or engravings to compensate so it makes sense to the reader. As an example Mormon wrote in Alma 24:19: “and thus we see that they buried their weapons of peace”
    However, he had to correct what he wrote because it did not say what he had intended, so he added: “and thus we see that they buried their weapons of peace, or they buried the weapons of war, for peace”
    This so-called “whoops,” oops, oops-a-daisy, oh-oh or slip of the stylus occurred when Mormon meant to say “war” instead of “peace,” i.e., he obviously meant to say “They buried their weapons of war,” but wrote instead “They buried their weapons of peace,” and had to correct it. In doing so, he used almost twice the amount of words, and probably required twice as much engraving on metal to add his correction.
    In fact, whenever you see the phrase “or rather,” it is a good signal that Mormon is correcting what he wrote just before that because he made a mistake that couldn’t be erased from the engraving. Such as:
    “…and by them shall all things be revealed, or, rather, shall secret things be made manifest, and hidden things shall come to light…” (Mosiah 8:17)
    “Now if a man desired to serve God, it was his privilege; or rather, if he believed in God it was his privilege to serve him; but if he did not believe in him there was no law to punish him” (Alma 30:9).
    Others:
• “Now behold, the people who were in the land Bountiful, or rather Moroni, feared that they would hearken to the words of Morianton” (Alma 50:32)
• “but by Ammon and his brethren, or rather by the power and word of God, they had been converted unto the Lord” (Alma 53:10)
• “Behold, Ammoron, I have written unto you somewhat concerning this war which ye have waged against my people, or rather which thy brother hath waged against them, and which ye are still determined to carry on after his death” (Alma 54:5)

Others are: Mosiah 8:17; Alma 1:5, Alma 2:34, Alma 17:18, Alma 32:16, Alma 36:14, Alma 39:16—in fact, in all, 96 such passages have been identified as Mormon correcting engraved mistakes thru rewording his abridgement. The point is, engraving on metal is a difficult way of keeping records and no doubt short-cuts to the engraving were implemented where possible. Thus, Mormon, in his writing, may well have skipped a particular meaning because it had already been included or used previously, and he was just taking for granted that the reader would “connect the dots.” In fact, how we write and talk today is much the same.
    Mormon, in his writing, obviously did the same. As an example: “bordering even to the sea, on the east and on the west” and also “which ran from the sea east even to the sea west” (both in Alma 22:27—the first intro into his insertion), then later used “from the east to the west sea” (Alma 22:32), which is toward the end of his insertion. Keeping in mind that Mormon’s insertion was not in verses, separated by such spaces, but in one writing (no paragraphs, sentences, etc.) It makes sense that he would have just “skipped” the word sea because it was simply not necessary to repeat it any more than it was in vs 27 “running from the east towards the west.”
    Today, the Modern Language Association has formalized the use of ellipsis writing to a high degree, indicating that an ellipsis must include spaces before and after each dot in all uses. If an ellipsis is meant to represent an omission, square brackets must surround the ellipsis to make it clear that there was no pause in the original quote: [ . . . ]. Currently, the MLA has removed the requirement of brackets in its style handbooks. However, some maintain that the use of brackets is still correct because it clears confusion (H. Ramsey Fowler, et al., The Little, Brown Handbook, Fourth Canadian Edition, Pearson Longman, Toronto, 2005, p440).
    In addition, the MLA now indicates that a three-dot, spaced ellipsis ( … ) should be used for removing material from within one sentence within a quote. When crossing sentences (when the omitted text contains a period, so that omitting the end of a sentence counts), a four-dot, spaced (except for before the first dot) ellipsis (. . . . ) should be used. When ellipsis points are used in the original text, ellipsis points that are not in the original text should be distinguished by enclosing them in square brackets (e.g. "text […] text").
    Mormon, of course, would not have been knowledgeable of any of this—the fact that he seems to have used ellipsis writing merely suggests that he understood that the foregoing mention of a subject matter was, at times, sufficient so its repetition was not necessary.