Monday, March 31, 2014

punctuation - Simultaneous comma and dash use

There are a lot of posts asking if it's okay to mix commas and dashes like this:





I walked my dog – who is nice, around the neighborhood.




And that's definitely not correct.



But what about the case of using the dash and comma simultaneously?



Which of these is correct?





I walked my dog, Frank – who is nice, around the neighborhood.



I walked my dog, Frank – who is nice – around the neighborhood.




EDIT:



The sentence contains incidental information within incidental information.

An appositive within an appositive. This is equivalent to:




I walked my dog [Frank (who is nice)] around the neighborhood.




However, when using dashes and commas, I've read I can't do this:




I walked my dog, Frank – who is nice –, around the neighborhood.





So, I have to close two, "brackets," with one punctuation mark: a dash or a comma.



The lack of a "closing" dash troubles me just as much as the lack of a "closing" comma.

No comments:

Post a Comment