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In the following sentence, should there be a comma before and after "in essence"?

Reddit, in essence an outlet for writers, poets and readers, has emerged as one of the leading hubs for creative expression.

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    No comma after.
    – Xanne
    Dec 19, 2020 at 12:00

2 Answers 2

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The two commas before "in essence" and after "readers" bracket a clause and can be justified as such.

Reddit (in essence an outlet for writers, poets and readers) has emerged as one of the leading hubs for creative expression.

If you remove one of those two you should remove the other and that would probably less clear than leaving them both.

A comma between "in essence" and "an outlet" is not necessary and is probably unhelpful. It might be used (though is still not necessary) if you had an early verb to bracket "in essence", as in:

Reddit is, in essence, an outlet for writers, poets and readers. It has emerged as one of the leading hubs for creative expression.

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I would put commas before and after the phrase 'in essence' because I realize that this way would help emphasize more on the proper noun 'Reddit'.

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