These are some texts my mother has sent me: ‘They found a mole on my back . . .’ ‘I think Janet may have been contacted by ISIS . . .’ ‘Madeline, the guest room is haunted . . .’ For the reader’s peace of mind: the mole was benign, Janet has not been contacted by the Islamic State and the guest room, well, that remains to be seen. I’ve always accepted my mother’s overuse of ellipses as an idiosyncrasy of an elderly texter. But she doesn’t reserve the ‘. . .’ for ominous messages. When I told her the...