How To Use Dashes With Commas

An em dash is made by typing two hyphens.

How to use dashes with commas. When a thought is left unfinished however a dash should be used instead. It is usually used as an alternative to another type of punctuation. Use dashes in place of a comma em dashes can be used in pairs to replace commas when writing a parenthetical or interruptive phrase. The man from ames iowa arrived. In general you can think of parentheses commas and dashes as a continuum of marks.

You use them to surround something that seems a bit out of place in the sentence an aside a clarification or a commentary. Remember that the dash is considered more jarring than using commas or parentheses so consider which punctuation achieves the desired effect. Use a longer em dash to join independent clauses with words like and but as or and for. To properly use a dash in an english sentence start by identifying which dash you should use. Generally speaking the dash does not have a unique role.

Joe and his trusty mutt was always welcome. Use an en dash when you need to connect terms that are already hyphenated or when you are using a two word phrase as a modifier. Dashes replace otherwise mandatory punctuation such as the commas after iowa and 2013 in the following examples. Words and phrases between dashes are not generally part of the subject. For example i never said he began when typing a completed sentence a comma precedes the closing quotation mark and the attribution.

A colon can be used immediately after the greeting in a formal letter less formal letters tend to use a comma in this location. First the dash can be used where commas or parentheses might be used as an aside or interruption in the middle of a sentence. Please accept my application for the position advertised in the news and observer. Using the en dash to denote a connection the en dash may also be used to indicate a connection between two words. Parentheses are the quiet whisper of an aside commas are the conversational voice of a friend walking by your desk and dashes are the yowl of a pirate dashing into a fray.

Place em dashes around non essential information or a list in the middle of a sentence like you would with commas. When the dash is used in this way it creates a compound adjective. When used as parentheses dashes are alternatives to brackets or commas. To whom it may concern. Let s start with those quiet parentheses.