Yonsu99
Junior Member
- Joined
- Jul 12, 2014
- Member Type
- Interested in Language
- Native Language
- Korean
- Home Country
- China
- Current Location
- South Korea
Hello, I have a question about writing style. When we use summative modifier, which should I put before it between dash(--) and comma(,)? The following sentences I observed have either dash or comma, so I'm a bit confused. Are there any rules how to use dash and comma as in the underlined phrases?
"The total cost to the country of all the various acts of incompetence and malfeasance in the Harding administration has been put at $2 billion--a sum that goes some way beyond stupendous, particularly bearing in mind that Harding's presidency lasted just twenty-nine months."
"[One] method of connecting the trailing element to the main clause is with a word that restates or sums up what has been said, a technique I am using in the sentence you are reading now."
(Stephen Wilbers, Keys to Great Writing. Writer's Digest Books, 2000)
"For some time it has been a noisy pageant--laughter, gunfire, war whoops, the intoning of sermons, a politician's blast, the cries of love and pain, iron-shod wheels on cobblestones--all in all a terrible racket."
(Quoted in The Oregon Blue Book, 1997)
"The headstone stood above seventeen layers of unrecorded East Londoners: cats, rabbits, pigeons, pebbles and rings, all impacted in the heavy clay."
(Iain Sinclair, Lights Out for the Territory. Granta Books, 1997)