Grammar & Writing Styles
Summary
Some of the information here came from this website. It seems like I generally use commas, em-dashes, and semicolons correctly, but I’m sure I overuse em-dashes at least.
Punctuation
Commas - “A, B”
Connect related ideas together, especially (but not exclusively) when combined with a conjunction.
Astronomers have known about the positions of stars for centuries, but they didn’t understand that the earth revolves around the sun.
All doctors, if they care about their patients, are concerned with good office hygiene.
Em-dashes - “A — B”
Connect related, but separate, ideas together.
And so, when the baby was born in June — nearly two months premature — the parents were happy but quite nervous, and they still had to buy all of the baby supplies.
Further information on em-dashes:
“Em dashes can be used in pairs to replace commas when writing a parenthetical or interruptive phrase. The dashes have a slightly more emphatic feel, making the reader focus on the information that is set inside the special marks.”
Semicolons - “A; B”
Connect ideas together, especially when the clauses have their own commas to separate said ideas; they tend to work better when commas alone would make it hard to parse more complex clauses.
The universe has always called to human beings; there could be no more final frontier than space.
Our family members came all the way from Denver, Colorado; Rochester, Minnesota; and even Paris, France.
My main research objective is to isolate the cause of the disease, as well as to contribute to the existing literature; for this will bring an end to starvation across the continent, create new study designs related to epidemiology, and change the very paradigm of my research field.