How To Use Dashes In The Middle Of A Sentence
An em dash can be used to mark a list placed in the middle of a sentence where commas are already used.
How to use dashes in the middle of a sentence. Dashes are often used to signal an abrupt change in a sentence indicating that the reader should pay close attention to what comes next. Some style and grammar guides even permit you to write a complete sentence within the dashes. It s longer than a hyphen and is commonly used to indicate a range or a pause. Two dashes can emphasize material in the middle of a sentence. How to use semicolons to set off a list in a the middle of a sentence.
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. When used to extend a sentence a dash can replace a semicolon a colon or three dots used as a pause for effect. 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. This helps avoid confusion regarding what is part of the list and where the list starts and stops.
Here are some examples. When used as parentheses dashes are alternatives to brackets or commas. Take it out and the sentence makes sense. The words between a pair of dashes may or may not form a complete sentence. Generally speaking the dash does not have a unique role.
Use an em dash to offset lists placed in a sentence. A dash can be used to add emphasis at the beginning middle or end of a sentence. If the break belongs to the surrounding sentence rather than to the quoted material the em dashes must appear outside the quotation marks. 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. The information inside the dashes is off topic.
Hieu vu minh unsplash. How to know when to use dashes or commas or braces when describing something in the middle of a sentence. Could use commas in the 15th century when of course nobody had electricity water was often pumped by hand. Just as terminal punctuation comes at the end of a sentence mid sentence punctuation is used somewhere in the middle. Here s what the chicago manual of style has to say about it.