Her best friend-indeed her only friend-did not even send her a birthday wish.Īs we saw with parentheses, when an em-dash replaces the commas that set off a phrase, it adds more emphasis. Her best friend, indeed her only friend, did not even send her a birthday wish. But again, use it only when it is clear that you want to add emphasis to a phrase.įor instance, in the sentence below the em-dash highlights an unusual (and unfortunate) fact about this person’s friend: An em-dash gives you another option when you are dealing with a phrase that describes or elaborates upon a noun. Let’s revisit our “Dennis road trip” sentence to use as an example.ĭennis took his car, a tiny, two-door Honda, on a weekend road trip. Another thing to keep in mind is that many sentences already have commas so using them to set off a descriptive phrase can make things a little crowded with commas. In terms of adding emphasis to a phrase, the comma falls somewhere between the parentheses and the em-dash. If you were wondering whether you could have used commas in place of parentheses or em-dashes in the examples above, you can. If it sounds odd adding special emphasis to the composers when reading the sentence aloud, then parentheses are better. Mastering the works of her favorite composers -Rachmaninoff, Brahms, and Chopin- took many diligent years of practice. In theory, that’s how your readers will interpret the sentence in their own minds-more emphasis, or “humph,” with the em-dash, and less with parentheses.įor instance, let’s say you are writing about a young pianist who mastered the works of composers known for their challenging pieces. Then replace the em-dashes with parentheses and reread the sentence without adding any emphasis to the phrase in parentheses. When you get to the information contained between the em-dashes, add a little bit of humph as you enunciate each word. Here’s a good strategy to use when trying to decide whether to use em-dashes or parentheses in your writing: If you find yourself wanting to throw in a little extra information about a noun in a particular sentence and are not sure whether the parentheses or the em-dash is the way to go, read the sentence out loud. Identifying how an em-dash is used and actually using one in your own writing are two different things, the latter being trickier. Don’t replace the second em-dash (as some tend to) with a comma or semicolon. It’s also important that when you set off a phrase using em-dashes that you used one em-dash immediately after the noun the phrase is describing and one immediately after the phrase. We use em-dashes to add emphasis to the size of the car. Now he is “stuffing” four other friends into this small car. But in the second sentence, the size of the Honda is relevant to the road trip. Since we don’t want to bring too much attention to this information, we keep this information in parentheses. In the first sentence, the fact that he has a small Honda doesn’t seem that closely connected to the fact that he took a road trip. So, let’s start with opens in a new windowparentheses versus em-dash, by comparing two sentences.ĭennis took his car (a tiny, two-door Honda) on a weekend road trip.ĭennis stuffed his four best friends into his car-a tiny, two-door Honda-for a weekend road trip. Lastly, I’ll touch on how to avoid overusing or misusing the em-dash-which can become tempting once you learn its many uses. I’ll begin with parentheses, then discuss commas, move on to a semicolon, and finally end with a colon. To show how to wield this handy punctuation mark, I’ll start by comparing two sentences: one that contains an em-dash (or em-dashes) and one that contains another punctuation mark. But an em-dash is not the same as these other marks it brings a different flavor to the sentence and adds a special emphasis that wasn’t there before. Depending on the sentence, the em-dash can have a similar function to parentheses, colons, commas, and even semicolons. I am talking about the em-dash, which looks like two hyphens connected into one long line.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |