How To Use Dashes In The Middle Of A Sentence
The material inside the dashes relates to the information in the rest of the sentence but it acts as an interruption to the main point that you re making.
How to use dashes in the middle of a sentence. Two dashes can emphasize material in the middle of a sentence. Use a dash to show a pause or break in meaning in the middle of a sentence. This helps avoid confusion regarding what is part of the list and where the list starts and stops. Some style and grammar guides even permit you to write a complete sentence within the dashes. Here are some examples.
An em dash can be used to mark a list placed in the middle of a sentence where commas are already used. It s longer than a hyphen and is commonly used to indicate a range or a pause. Examples include the comma semicolon colon dash hyphen apostrophe and quotation marks. Someday he s going to hit one of those long shots and his voice turned huffy i won t be there to see it taken from 6 90. Take it out and the sentence makes sense.
My brothers richard and john are visiting hanoi. A dash is a little horizontal line that floats in the middle of a line of text not at the bottom. When using the abbreviation etc should it be parenthetical i e. It is usually used as an alternative to another type of punctuation. Dashes are often used to signal an abrupt change in a sentence indicating that the reader should pay close attention to what comes next.
How to know when to use dashes or commas or braces when describing something in the middle of a sentence. When used as parentheses dashes are alternatives to brackets or commas. Could use commas in the 15th century when of course nobody had electricity water was often pumped by hand. Everything i saw in my new neighborhood from the graceful elm trees to the stately brick buildings reminded me of my alma mater. Here s what the chicago manual of style has to say about it.
When used to extend a sentence a dash can replace a semicolon a colon or three dots used as a pause for effect. Just as terminal punctuation comes at the end of a sentence mid sentence punctuation is used somewhere in the middle. If the break belongs to the surrounding sentence rather than to the quoted material the em dashes must appear outside the quotation marks. How to use semicolons to set off a list in a the middle of a sentence. The words between a pair of dashes may or may not form a complete sentence.