Let's turn to the history of ellipsis first. Albert Sturteuant explains that the use of ellipsis was first detected in the ancient German dialect: Old Norse. Their use of ellipsis occurred much earlier more extensively than in any other ancient dialects known to most researchers. In the analysis of Norse passages, researchers have uncovered the omissions of whole infinitive phrases and the "to be" verb in much of their writings. Because they were so often implied to the context of the language, they did not need to be commonly expressed. The elliptical omission of the infinitive phrase and "to be" verbs in the ancient Germanic language, Old Norse, has been carried on into the modern Germanic language where these specific omissions are still prevalent today.
It is illustrated in the article in "The Latin Imprint on Emily Dickinson's Poetry" that famous writers such as Emily Dickinson and William Shakespeare are especially known for their use of ellipsis's. These writers, and more of their time were applying the Latin rule to English Grammatical Structure called an enallage: "Enallage is a change of words, or substitution of one gender, number, case, person, tense, mood, or voice of the same word for another." .
Instead of applying one word for another, many authors took this rule to justify their applying no word(s) for others. Eventually, this rule formulated the defining of an ellipsis and elliptical sentence in which grammarians began creating types of elliptical constructions. William Bright describes that men such as Sag and William's, during the 1970's began to research elliptical construction and words that were applied rather than stated in Middle and Modern English. From there they began prescribing certain types and usage's for an ellipsis. For example:.
1. The omission of words to escape repetition. .
-Jane went one way, Stephanie the other.
