ClearTips: Stunning sentences

Interruptive dashes

You can occasionally use a dash to separate part of a sentence and thus draw attention to it, just as you would with a dramatic pause in speech. The dash forces your readers to momentarily reflect on what precedes the dash—and then flings them into what follows.

New York is a city ripe with extremes—of wealth and poverty, of creative energy and rage.

Without the dash, the reader would have trouble disentangling with extremes of wealth from of wealth and poverty. With it, city ripe with extremes is clearly articulated from the elaborations: of wealth and poverty, of creative energy and rage.

So there's the mess—to date.

The vagabonds went on to Cuzco, an ancient city—or, rather, two or three different cities piled one on top of another.

Although Kuusisto's love for poetry can result in patches of overly self-conscious prose—"my soul crawls around like a snail exploring a piece of broken glass"—he is a powerful writer with a musical ear for language and a gift for emotional candor.

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