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I have a sentence which currently looks like

They dance in the distance like graceful stage performers, their stage: the sky!

The comma introduces more detail, but the colon is "more" than a comma and should ideally be "less".

What punctuation should I use between

  1. performers and their
  2. stage and the sky?
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  • I've made rather a large edit and the title could still be better. Hopefully I've expressed what you see as the problem.
    – Andrew Leach
    Commented Mar 9 at 10:41
  • 1
    Commenters: please write an answer. Even if the sentence is fine, explain why it's fine. Your answers will help other askers (especially if this question can be a duplicate target).
    – Andrew Leach
    Commented Mar 9 at 12:23
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    No changes needed -- the punctuation in your example is fine as it is.
    – BillJ
    Commented Mar 11 at 15:23
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    Personally I think the colon adds drama, no need to change it.
    – barbecue
    Commented Mar 11 at 15:36
  • 1
    Don't repeat the word stage. That wrecks the sentence!
    – Lambie
    Commented Mar 12 at 18:30

4 Answers 4

18

I'd agree that it would be a good style choice to have [medium pause/break] ... [short pause/break] here. One way round this is to push the supercomma usage of the semicolon:

  • They dance in the distance like graceful stage performers; their stage, the sky!

Hopefully, the rather poetic register will dissuade hyperprescriptivists from claiming foul. But here are several examples of the use of a comma to replace omitted words that goes beyond that of the usual gapping comma (standing in for words already used in the sentence: John likes strawberry ice cream; Sue, vanilla). Fragments are usually left:

  • Not five blocks further, in the northern direction, a man stood on the corner, grimly silent, both hands in the pockets of his shabby top coat, disappointment stamped on his countenance. His only plea, the finding of a job. His was gone, but his family had to eat ....

[The Reflector; 1933]

  • Tomorrow, the World! is a 1944 black-and-white film directed by Leslie Fenton ....
  • But for Mark Standish, 'Run through the Jungle' has a totally different meaning as he literally runs through the Vietnam jungle to get away from his decisions. His sole purpose, to destroy the one person he sees as the root of all his bad decisions.

[Natalia Morrow]

  • ... or the [Holy] Ghost ... will ... bid us turn

            and flame unto a last consuming light:

            His light, our light ....

[Scott Cairns, poet]

  • Black Lives Matter ... You bleed, we bleed. You suffer, we suffer.

[Waves of Positivity]

And Wiktionary and Farlex Dictionary of Idioms accept

  • mi casa, su casa

as having entered the lexicon. The literary (or pseudo-literary in the last example?) flavour is seen in these examples.

One reference not confining the 'omitted words comma' to gapping is:

1.13 Consider using a comma where one or more words are omitted but understood in context.

  • (a) Understood words. A comma pause signals the reader that an obvious word or phrase, commonly the verb from the previous clause, is to be understood at this point.

[Redbook; Garner, I believe]

If you want to play it safe, signal a slightly more marked first pause with a dash:

  • They dance in the distance like graceful stage performers – their stage, the sky!

(To my mind, the spaced en-dash common in the UK is less jarring. And the colon is becoming dated in running text.)

An ellipsis gives even more pause for reflection.

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7

Their stage the sky is an absolute phrase. An absolute phrase has its own noun or pronoun along with a participle phrase. When the participle is a form of to be, it can be omitted (which is what’s happening in your absolute phrase):

They dance in the distance like graceful stage performers, their stage [being] the sky.

They dance in the distance like graceful stage performers, their stage the sky.

No punctuation is needed in your absolute phrase.

Here’s an example from ThoughtCo’s What Are Absolute Phrases in English?:

The storks circled high above us, their slender bodies sleek and black against the orange sky.

And another from Guide to Grammar and Writing’s The Garden of Phrases:

The season [being] over, they were mobbed by fans in Times Square.

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  • Oh dear, Tinfoil Hat! An absolute is not a phrase but a non-finite clause., so the term is not relevant here. "Their stage: the sky" is a supplementary NP with "their stage "as head and "the sky" as an elaboration of the head, marked by the elaborative marker, i.e. a colon. Simples!
    – BillJ
    Commented Mar 11 at 15:21
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    @BillJ — Perhaps according to your grammar of choice. But an absolute phrase it is in traditional grammar terms. Commented Mar 11 at 15:31
  • Please see here link and here link
    – BillJ
    Commented Mar 11 at 16:33
  • A broader usage is given in the New World Encylopedia (my earlier reference was the University of Sheffield: User-defined Dictionary (Beta)): 'Absolute adjectives do not belong to a larger construction (aside from a larger adjective phrase), and typically modify either the subject of a sentence or whatever noun or pronoun they are closest to; for example, happy is an absolute adjective in "The boy, happy with his lolly, did not look where he was going."' Commented Mar 11 at 16:57
  • @BillJ — I'm not sure what you’re trying to show with your links — that some people call it an absolute clause? Others call it an absolute phrase. “See here link.” Commented Mar 12 at 2:38
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If you wanted a slightly different intonation:

They dance in the distance like graceful stage performers. Their stage? The sky!

But the alliteration of "dance in the distance" makes me want another alliteration to balance it, perhaps:

They dance in the distance like lithe stage performers. Their stage? The sky!

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  • Not sure how changing graceful to lithe makes it an alliteration?
    – user405662
    Commented Mar 10 at 15:18
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    @user405662 "like lithe" Or is alliteration the wrong term for that in that place? Commented Mar 10 at 15:26
  • It is. I overlooked it for some reason.
    – user405662
    Commented Mar 10 at 19:50
0

like graceful stage performers, their stage: the sky! is poor due to the repetition of stage.

  • They dance in the distance like graceful performers, their stage: the sky!

There is no need to repeat stage. And you can make more impact by not using: their stage is the sky.

  • They dance in the distance, graceful performers, their stage: the sky!

Even better for impact. With two ellipses.

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  • The question doesn't ask to improve the style. There are a dozen ways of rewriting the sentence. The OP wants to know about the punctuation. P.S The phrase "stage actors" and "stage" are quite different in meaning and form and are not examples of poor writing style. Removing "stage performers" you are in fact modifying the meaning of the original sentence but that's "opinable" (which my spellchecker tells me is incorrect but it's listed in dictionaries, and its shorter than saying "that's a question of opinion")
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Mar 14 at 12:05
  • I quite like the fact that "stage" is used twice in the sentence, it juxtaposes the manmade stage with the one created by nature.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Mar 14 at 12:07
  • @Mari-LouA Fyi, I always improve them when the question hinges on something like this. I think non-repetition is better. I never said that state actors is poor writing. It is the unneeded repetition that is. If you say"their stage, the sky", you are not changing the meaning of performers without the word stage at all. Recently, we've had questions re grammar from bad translations and one even created a very funny crash blossom. Here it is just bad style.
    – Lambie
    Commented Mar 14 at 14:01

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