Friday, November 2, 2018

style - Dashes vs. Commas vs. parentheses?


Occasionally I write sentences containing subparts with extra information. I never know how to block off this information from the rest of the sentence. Three ways I have seen are dashes, commas, and parentheses. For example:




When Bilbo sat down for a meal — his third of the day — he noticed the table was broken.


When Bilbo sat down for a meal, his third of the day, he noticed the table was broken.


When Bilbo sat down for a meal (his third of the day) he noticed the table was broken.



Which way is correct?




No comments:

Post a Comment