Interesting Construction with Dashes and Questions

Margie Wakeman WellsThe Comma, The Dash, The Question Mark 4 Comments

This is a sentence I was asked about on Facebook. And I have it correctly punctuated here. Have there been any major stressful events in the last year that you can think of — divorce? someone, a family member, dying? a major change in your work? — that has caused additional stress? There are dashes around the suggested answers for …

A “Redefining” with “That Is”

Margie Wakeman WellsThe Comma, The Question Mark, The Semicolon, Uncategorized 3 Comments

Here is a punctuation question from FB that inspired today’s blog: “On examination her lower extremities had normal capillary refill — that is, normal circulation — and no trophic changes, in other words, none of the signs of RSD.” Often people want to redefine or further explain what they have just said. We will deal here with this situation when …