Punctuation marks are to writing what vocal delivery is to speech. Can you imagine talking in a monotone without pause? Your audience would have difficulty making sense of your words, let alone figuring out where emphasis and nuance belong.

If you drain the punctuation from your writing, you have no louds, no softs, no expression, no innuendo. If you use only a few punctuation marks, you seriously restrict your style. If you misuse punctuation marks, you send your reader down the wrong road, maybe even up a tree.

You need to understand exactly what each mark can and cannot do, as well as the message it gives to your reader.

Dashes

First of all, a dash is not a hyphen. It is twice as long (you need to hit the hyphen key twice to create one dash) and it performs very different functions.

Dashes do three jobs, each of which can be accomplished by another punctuation mark. Why, then, use dashes? Because they carry two messages—one related to the job they are doing and the other related to emphasis, clarity, or formality. Here are the roles of dashes:

1. They surround an interruption

2. They lead to an afterthought

3. They introduce a specific explanation

Surrounding an interruption

Examples:

My daughter—Rebecca—has an imaginary playmate. My neighbor’s children—Sima, Sarah, and Sam—interact with the real kids on our block.

Note: In the first example, the dashes give the interruption more emphasis than commas or parentheses would. In the second example, the dashes lend more clarity than commas would, since the interruption contains commas.

Leading to an afterthought

Examples:

Rebecca speaks to her friend in a private language—one that I don’t understand. Her friend replies with abundant good humor—at least, that’s the way it appears.

Note: Although in the first example a comma could lead to the afterthought, the dash gives it more emphasis. In the second example, the dash lends both emphasis and clarity (using commas before and after at least would make it look like an interruption, which it isn’t).

Introducing a specific explanation

Examples:

Rebecca has a name for her playmate—Stefan Stefanopolis. Stefan has one great quality—he makes Rebecca laugh.

Note: While a colon or parentheses may also be used to distinguish an explanation, the dash creates a different effect: it is less formal than a colon; it gives more attention to the explanation than parentheses.

Hyphens

Hyphens connect multiple adjectives that appear to the left of a noun. What is a multiple adjective? Two or more descriptive words that need each other to create the meaning you want—for example, blue-eyed boy: he is not a blue boy or an eyed boy; blue and eyed must be linked, to make proper sense.

Furthermore, blue-eyed is hyphenated because it appears to the left of boy. If it appeared to the right, it would not be hyphenated—for example, the boy is blue eyed.

More examples:

nine-hole golf course 300-page book no-nonsense approach life-affirming goals labor-intensive work vine-ripened tomatoes 58-year-old senator off-the-record comment four- and six-part harmony

Note: Don’t hyphenate when the first descriptive word is an adverb ending in ly—for example, poorly written script or highly regarded institution.

Parentheses

Parentheses are for surrounding background information, aside comments, material of secondary importance. They de-emphasize the text they contain; they prompt the reader to lower her voice until she exits the parenthetical remark.

Parentheses can occur within a sentence, referring to a given word or phrase; at the end of a clause, referring to the entire statement; or around an upcoming new sentence. (In other words, they can surround an interruption, an afterthought, or a sentence, like the one you’re reading now.)

Examples:

Apparently, Stefan Stefanopolis (my daughter’s imaginary playmate) is quite amusing. He keeps Rebecca laughing throughout the day (and sometimes into the night). I’m a little worried that Rebecca doesn’t know what’s real and what’s not. (This morning she asked me why I hadn’t served Stefan any pancakes.)

Note: The second and third examples show that a period can go either outside or inside the closing parenthesis, depending on what just ended—a sentence containing a parenthetical remark or a separate sentence within parentheses.