Timeline for Punctuating a sentence containing em dashes within commas [duplicate]
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
12 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Sep 29, 2015 at 8:45 | vote | accept | Adam | ||
| May 14, 2015 at 22:43 | history | closed |
FumbleFingers Drew ScotM anongoodnurse tchrist♦ |
Duplicate of em-dash and comma, which comes first | |
| May 13, 2015 at 21:51 | answer | added | almcnicoll | timeline score: 1 | |
| May 13, 2015 at 21:02 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | If you wanted to get really convoluted you could use brackets to enclose a much longer parenthetical element, within which a [sub-]parenthetical element could be delimited by em-dashes, and that lesser element could contain an even lower one delimited by commas. I don't know if style guides would go that far, but my guess is if they did, they'd all agree the same commas within em-dashes within brackets hierarchy where nesting is involved. It looks right to me, anyway. | |
| May 13, 2015 at 20:50 | comment | added | Adam | @FumbleFingers I see what you're saying. Em dashes on the outside does look better and seem more natural than with commas. | |
| May 13, 2015 at 20:46 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | ...on second thoughts, I was wrong when I said it was just a stylistic choice whether to use commas, em-dashes, or actual parentheses for parenthetical text. I suspect you're effectively trying to nest one parenthetical element inside another. The convention is that you use em-dashes if the parenthical element itself includes commas, so you might consider I drove my little brother—Billy, the youngest of us—to the store. In principle the youngest of us is a parenthetical addition to Billy, but it would be excessive to try to add a comma after it before the final em-dash. | |
| May 13, 2015 at 20:40 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | I've no idea what an appositive is, and I don't feel inclined to look it up right now either. What I'm saying is if you remove your parenthetical element (an easy word, assuming you know what parentheses are), it should be pretty obvious you don't want a comma at all. | |
| May 13, 2015 at 20:35 | review | Close votes | |||
| May 14, 2015 at 17:14 | |||||
| May 13, 2015 at 20:28 | comment | added | Adam | @FumbleFingers So you're saying that creating an appositive out of Billy isn't necessary? | |
| May 13, 2015 at 20:22 | history | edited | Adam | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 145 characters in body
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| May 13, 2015 at 20:15 | comment | added | FumbleFingers | I think it's your comma after brother that's causing the confusion. The element between em-dashes (or commas, it's just a stylistic choice in your example) is parenthetical. Which means you should be able to remove both it and the delimiters without affecting the grammaticality of what remains. | |
| May 13, 2015 at 19:54 | history | asked | Adam | CC BY-SA 3.0 |