Grammar Girl here, today I'll explain the difference between dashes, commas, and parentheses.

Stefer Robbins, the host of the Get It Dungai podcast, has been writing a book and his

birthday is today.

He told me that his birthday wish would be for me to do a show to help him understand

the difference between dashes, commas, and parentheses because it keeps coming up in his

writing.

Well, Stefer, it's an odd thing to want for your birthday, but here it is.

In general, you can think of parentheses, commas, and dashes as a continuum of marks.

Parentheses are the quiet whisper of an aside.

Commas are the conversational voice of a friend walking by your desk.

And dashes are the yowl of a pirate dashing into a fray, arg.

But let's start with those quiet parentheses.

You can use them to surround something that seems a bit out of place in a sentence,

an aside, a clarification, or a commentary.

Sometimes when you go back to edit your first draft, you'll find that you can rework

your sentence to include the parenthetical statement, or simply delete the things in parentheses,

unless there's something like irreverent quips that are an intentional part of your tone.

Here's an example of one way to use parentheses to add additional information.

The 30th anniversary of the eruption of Mount St. Helens, open parentheses, May 18, 1980,

closed parentheses, brought back vivid memories of ash and darkness.

The date May 18, 1980 is in parentheses in that sentence.

It's something you want to tell the reader, but it isn't a necessary part of the sentence.

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