Punctuation Cheat Sheet, Part II
Commas, Colons, and Dashes
Welcome to Shelf Life started way past the Shelf Life–starting deadline; a Shelf Life which continues in the same vein of pedantry from last Thursday and sharing answers to punctuation questions you’ve never asked in your wildest dreams. Last Thursday’s article covered periods, quotation marks, and brackets and my hope was that, if you are not yourself an editor specializing in punctuation, you might have learned like one neat thing (about punctuation). Today’s article is on the comma, colon (and their cousin, the semicolon), and the various dashes.
The main thing I have to say about commas is this: There are a very few specific, objectively right and wrong ways to use them; outside of those specific ways you should just use them (or not) however you want. This is because the comma has a few important grammatical functions and it also stands in for a pause in human speech. Editors will sometimes see commas used in what they think is a random or illogical manner because the author wasn’t using them in a grammatically prescribed way but they may be using them to create a caesura, a brief pause, in the prose, and in my opinion this is fine.
Here’s where you should always use a comma:
Where the style manual you are using mandates it or it is needed to clarify your intended meaning, a series comma (aka the Oxford comma) should be used. That’s the comma that comes before the “and” or “or” in a series of items, like this: “I’d like to thank my parents, God, and Ayn Rand.” More on the series comma here.
When a pair of commas is being used parenthetically, to set explanatory text off from the sentence, both commas in the pair should be used (as seen earlier in this sentence). Another example: “My brother, Jack, is here” (I have one brother, his name is Jack, and he is here). This has a different meaning than “My brother Jack is here” (one of my brothers, the one named Jack, is here).
“Before a dialogue tag, if no other punctuation (like a question or exclamation mark) supersedes it,” she said.
Here’s when to never use a comma:
When doing so creates a comma splice; that is, when a comma links two independent clauses that should be sentences. Example: “She ran the bath, bathtime is at seven o’clock each evening.”
Some other uses of the comma that don’t have to do with creating elegant prose include:
After every three digits, counting from the right, of a long number: For example, “3,546,001.”
Around the year at the end of a date: Example, “On March 20th, 1978, we weren’t born yet.”
Around the state (US) or country following a city: “They were from London, England, and visiting for three weeks.”
Around a titular suffix that follows a person’s name: “John Smith, Jr, graduated in 1999” or “Jane Q. Public, MD, is assistant professor at Harvard.” (Note: Not all style manuals enclose “Jr” and “Sr” in commas).
A corollary to the last—numerals that follow someone’s name are not enclosed with commas: “John Smith III graduated in 2019.”
Outside of these rules, commas can be used to help approximate the rhythm of human speech in writing, and since everyone’s speech rhythms are slightly different this may mean not everyone uses commas the same way when they write. This means an editor or another reader coming behind the author may suggest to add or remove a comma to impose a speech rhythm that makes more sense to them.
As an editor, my rules for commas when editing someone else’s work are:
If it’s not wrong, don’t remove it.
If it’s not mandatory, don’t add it.
I try to let people enjoy their right to use commas however they want. This is what it means to live in a free country.
Colons and semicolons are like the commas’ overseas cousins, they’re still a beloved part of the family but we don’t see them that often because they live in Dublin or something.
A colon is used at the end of an independent clause that introduces something: For instance, a list, a quotation, or an explanation. A colon should not be used at the end of a clause that can’t stand on its own; that is, a colon should only close an independent clause. However, a colon can introduce a clause that is not a full sentence, like this:
She bakes all kinds of bread: sourdough, pumpernickel, brioche, and more.
“She bakes all kinds of bread” is a full sentence. The list of bread types after the colon is not a full sentence on its own.
When an independent clause (a full sentence) is coming after the colon, the first word of the new sentence should be capitalized. When the part after the colon is not a full sentence, the first word is not capitalized.
The semicolon can be used between two closely related independent clauses. Anywhere you can’t use a comma because it would create a comma splice? Bam, semicolon. “She ran the bath; bathtime is at seven o’clock each evening.” The semicolon can also be used in place of a coordinating conjunction like “and,” “but,” “or,” and so on. “We like to eat candy; we like to eat cake.”
You can (and should) also use the semicolon in place of the series comma when the items in the series include commas themselves or when elements of a series are themselves (the elements) series. The “series semicolon” helps keep things clear:
We like to go on vacation to the beach, especially the ones in Florida; to Disneyland, Disney World, and other amusement parks; and to cities we’ve never visited before.
If you have not yet made a New Year’s resolution, why not resolve to use more semicolons this year? It is a versatile but underused punctuation mark and I think the world would be a better place with more of them.
Dashes are probably my favorite punctuation and I did a deep dive into them in a previous Shelf Life (Hyphen Mighty) so if you want to know even more about dashes, you can read the previous article on that topic. Today’s Shelf Life is intended to give an overview of dash basics so you can quickly use the right one in the right place.
The dash you probably use the most is the hyphen: The short one that connects words to each other. The hyphen is use to connect words or parts of words. Longer dashes are used to connect phrases or parts of sentences. If you’re connecting two words, or connecting an affix to a word, you want the hyphen.
When two words come together and find that they love each other very much, they form a compound adjective. I’m just kidding they don’t have to be in love. That’s a very old-fashioned way to look at it. See how “old-fashioned” is modifying “way”? “Old-fashioned” describes the “way” I am looking at something. “Old-fashioned,” ironically, is not a compound adjective; it’s a word on its own that always takes a hyphen. So I’m confusing things.
A compound adjective only takes a hyphen when it appears before the word it’s modifying:
“It was a last-minute change” but “The change was made last minute.”
“The quick-thinking heroine saved the day” but “The heroine saved the day with her quick thinking.”
“Take the one-way street here” but “This street is one way.”
Sometimes an adjective has a hyphen in it and will always have that hyphen whether it appears before or after the word it’s modifying:
“That’s an old-fashioned way to look at it” and “That way of looking at it is old-fashioned.”
“That close-fitting dress was carefully tailored” and “The carefully tailored dress was close-fitting.”
When in doubt, check the dictionary. If a word appears hyphenated in the dictionary (like old-fashioned or close-fitting), then that word just has a hyphen and need not be treated like a compound adjective.
Also notice in the last bullet above that “carefully tailored” is not hyphenated even though it is modifying “dress,” as in “carefully tailored dress.” A compound adjective is never hyphenated when the first part of the compound ends in -ly or is the word very.
“A very special holiday celebration” but “An extra-special holiday celebration.”
“A likely looking fellow” but “A fine-looking fellow.”
“A finely tuned instrument” but “A well-tuned instrument.”
This is because the presence of that adverb before the adjective can’t be doing anything else. If I said “an extra special holiday celebration,” you would have to ask yourself, does she mean:
An extra special holiday celebration, that is, one holiday celebration that is extra special? Or
An extra special holiday celebration, that is, we already had one special holiday celebration and now we’re having an extra one?
“Extra” in that case could be modifying more than one thing, and so the hyphen in extra-special is to indicate what extra is modifying. While you can have an extra holiday celebration (room for confusion), you cannot have a very holiday celebration (no room for confusion). No need for a hyphen there.
The en dash (–), which is slightly longer than the hyphen but shorter than the em dash (—), is the one you rarely or never need to use. It’s proper uses include within numeral ranges (“pages 48–63”), when connecting two things that have an equal relationship (“the US–Canada border”), or when attaching a modifier to a word that is already, itself, an open or hyphenated compound (“the pre–World War III era”). In all of these cases, you may simply use a hyphen and no one but an editor could ever care.
The em dash—perhaps my favorite punctuation mark—can be used in many places where a comma, pair of parentheses, or colon would work. You can use it to set off text parenthetically as you might do with parens or commas (as in the previous sentence). You can use the em dash like a colon to introduce a subordinate clause, list, or example text—like this. You can use it to set off an exclamation: “Hey—yeah, you!” You can also use it in dialogue as the abrupter cousin to an ellipsis (which indicates someone has trailed off). An em dash in that context indicates someone stopped talking suddenly or was cut off.
Basically, the em dash is the chameleon of punctuation. You can use it pretty much anywhere and for pretty much anything. In fact, forget all the other punctuation marks I showed you. You only need the one—
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