Free, easy to understand English
grammar and writing tutorial lessons

Click for Main Topic List

Writing well at the sentence level

Combining short and long sentences

Modifiers

Adjectival modifiers

Adjectival clause

Adverbial modifiers

Adverbial clause

Types of phrases

Participle phrase

Prepositional phrase

Absolute phrase

Infinitive phrase

Flowing from one sentence to the next

Contrast

Comparison

Summarise

Emphasise

Addition

Cause and effect – leading to a conclusion

Examples

Sense of time

Sense of position or direction

Sentence fragments

Use of the dash

Use of the dash

The dash can be used after an initial statement in a sentence to lead onto further ideas or information.

The author enjoys using dark imagery - his poems abound with gloomy cemeteries, weeping trees and abandoned mansions.

It’s a great way of flowing on from a statement to ideas supporting that statement without explicitly using a word to do so. You could, of course, have written this sentence like this:

The author enjoys using dark imagery, such as gloomy cemeteries, weeping trees and abandoned mansions.

The dash gives you another way of flowing on from the initial statement to the supporting ideas. To keep with the idea of getting as much variety into your sentences, you could use both - sometimes use the dash, sometimes use words to make the transition.

This is the end of the chapter. Click here to return to the main topic list