Ellipses abound on The Singing Bones, a blog run by Blogger user ana-b. A collector of rare 45s, her posts highlight a single record and usually include a brief history of it as well as ana-b’s personal feelings or thoughts on it - and on just about whatever she feels like ranting about. Scrolling through the blog, I’ve learned about weekend trips she’s taken, what the weather was like on various days she was posting, and her thoughts on the show Treme (and they are not good). At times, the reader has to remind themselves that this is, in fact, a music blog, and it seems ana-b has to check herself as well now and again. In a post from August 2012 titled They don’t want to see me with you…., ana-b begins by talking about the morning’s forecast (“80 mph winds with gusts up to 100, then slowing back down a bit” in case you were wondering). She jokingly calls this good news, particularly in comparison to the previous night’s forecast, and says, in a parenthetical aside, “at this point, I’ll take whatever I can get.” The post then goes on and on about the weather - how much flooding she thinks there will be and such - and what she thinks the aftermath will be like (she’s pretty optimistic because her friends have “a portable generator and are well stocked with food, water, and 14 different varieties of alcohol”). Only the final few sentences refer to the record in the big photo at the top of the post.
All of these ventures into areas only vaguely related to the record at hand, or sometimes completely unrelated to it, create for a very casual, rambling tone throughout the blog. Even when ana-b stays more on focus, however, this tone is maintained through her lax use of grammar. As I mentioned before, this blog contains ellipses galore. Every single post title ends with five periods, and nearly every post ends with her regular sign off: “Hope ya'll enjoy......” Sprinkled in between are more superfluous uses of ellipses, and like you’ve seen, ana-b is not afraid to surpass the accepted three periods. Frequent parenthetical asides, some of which are just a question mark or exclamation point (see “Baby, I need you…..” ), and sentence fragments also contribute to the relaxed, colloquial tone of the blog.
Ana-b’s diction, too, helps create this tone. In “Baby, I need you…..” for example, we see her start many sentences with “Well…” In writing this is often unnecessary, but it is how one would speak, so that’s how ana-b writes it. She is not looking to filter or edit herself whatsoever. Her use of slang establishes her voice as being not only casual, but also distinctly southern. Most notably, her frequent use of “y’all” makes it clear she is a New Orleans-native (if you couldn’t already tell from the “I Love NOLA” banner at the top of her homepage). Similarly, in “Baby, I need you…..” we see her substitute “ya” for “you.”
When you read this blog, it really sounds like you’re talking to a neighbor or a friend. I could hear a southern female voice in my head as I read through ana-b’s blog posts. The words flow the way they would from one’s mouth, and the distinctive passion and phrasing let you know it is ana-b’s.
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