BEYOND COMMAS

—The Dash—(cue dramatic music!)

 

The Dash

Use dashes to indicate an abrupt or dramatic break or shift in tone or thought

For example: The waitress—let’s call her Betty Slutz—stopped and looked at me, then slowly swaggered back to the table, staring at me with majestic disdain the while.

Or: We overlook just how large a role we all play

—and by “we” I mean society—in determining who makes it and who does not.

The Dash

Use dashes for a list, a restatement, or an amplificationFor example:

Just up the road from Gatlinburg is the town of Pigeon Forge, which twenty years ago was a sleepy hamlet—nay, which aspired to be a sleepy hamlet—famous only as the hometown of Dolly Parton.

Or:It sits just outside the main entrance to the Great Smoky

Mountains National Park and specializes in providing all those things that the park does not—principally, slurpy food, motels, gift shops, and sidewalks on which to waddle and dawdle—nearly all of it strewn along a single, astoundingly ugly main street.

 

The Dash

Use dashes to mean namely, in other words, or that is in an explanation

For example: Roseto, Pennsylvania, was its own tiny, self-sufficient world—all but unknown by the society around it—and it might well have remained so but for a man named Stuart Wolf.

Or:A whole dimension of drudgery—the tedious, mad, really quite pointless business of stepping over every inch of rocky ground between Georgia and Maine—had been removed.

 

The Dash

Dashes and colons are frequently interchangeableFor example: In 1951, the year I was born, Gatlinburg had just one retail business—a general store called Ogle’s.

vs. In 1951, the year I was born, Gatlinburg had just one retail business: a general store called Ogle’s.

The same would hold true when setting off a list as on the previous slide.

The Dash vs. the Comma

Unlike an appositive or a non-restrictive phrase or clause set off with commas, the information set off with a dash or dashes is emphasized and necessary to the author’s purpose

(Note: An appositive is a noun or pronoun—often with modifiers—set beside another noun or pronoun to explain or identify it.)

For example:He indicated his bag on the carousel—a green army surplus duffle—and let me pick it up.

vs.He indicated his bag on the carousel, a green army surplus duffle, and let me pick it up.