How to punctuate this sentence?

Question

I was just wondering how to punctuate this sentence properly.

'They were, after all, merely extraneous extras - fighting a battle already lost.'

And if anyone has a better expression for 'fighting a battle already lost,' that would be extremely helpful too! Thank you!

Will Crawford · Accepted Answer · 2018-03-03 02:53:24Z

0

I hate to be mean, but that really is an unnecessary tautology!

The expression is fine, although you might say lost cause¹.

answered Mar 3 '18 at 2:53

Will Crawford

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How did you get a superscript? – KarlG Mar 3 '18 at 3:03
AltGr + the number (works for 1, 2 and 3 here), 105-key "international" keyboard, GB layout. Linux / X.org / KDE 5, no idea whether you can do that on Windows. Also kind of cheating, those characters are a throwback to before HTML :o) – Will Crawford Mar 3 '18 at 3:08
It looks as though you can do <sup>...</sup> in answers, though. – Will Crawford Mar 3 '18 at 3:10
I haven't seen a list of html tags you can or can't use. I'm only on an iPad at the moment. Drive fried on the iMac. – KarlG Mar 3 '18 at 3:57
It's cunningly concealed ... go to /editing-help#html, there's a link from there to a list of what's supported. – Will Crawford Mar 3 '18 at 4:08

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