comma, semicolon or colon with apposition: Company, a manufacturer

[melbeach]

Hi, first post here. I'm adding a professional profile at LinkedIn and am looking for help on punctuating a sentence:

Out of college, I was hired as Accounting Clerk at XYZ Company – a manufacturer of widgets.

In place of the dash, would I use a comma, colon, or semicolon? This seems like such a simple example, but I have yet to find the rule that defines it.

Thanks!
-melbeach

 

[Hikee]

In my contention a dash is absolutely fine.

<< Off topic. >>

 

[tochinaandbach]

Agreed, a dash is fine. You could also use a comma. The phrase after the dash is adjectival: it describes XYZ company. Because there's no verb there, you can't use a colon or semicolon.

<< Off topic. >>

 

[Hikee]

True, tochinaandbach - I haven't thought of that. I'm not native English speaker and so in school they always told me not to leave any "lonely" nouns. But you're right about the meanning though

 

[MuttQuad]

Hi, first post here. I'm adding a professional profile at LinkedIn and am looking for help on punctuating a sentence:

In place of the dash, would I use a comma, colon, or semicolon? This seems like such a simple example, but I have yet to find the rule that defines it.

Thanks!
-melbeach

The dash is fine (but you used a hyphen, not a real dash), although I'd prefer a comma.

<< Off topic. >>

 

[panjandrum]

<< Moderator note.
The topic of the thread is the punctuation of the sentence.
We were not asked to comment on the substance of the sentence.
panjandrum >>

 

[melbeach]

Agreed, a dash is fine. You could also use a comma. The phrase after the dash is adjectival: it describes XYZ company. Because there's no verb there, you can't use a colon or semicolon.

In the past, I've always used a dash for a sentence like this. But after I looked into it more, the GrammarBook reference suggested that dashes are okay in casual writing but frowned upon in formal writing. (Please note that I can't post the link because I am new to the forum.) The reference also made the distinction between en dash and em dash. I imagine that my example would call for an em dash. But since my use of dash wasn't shown in the reference at all, I assumed that it was incorrect.

I think that in my case, since I am posting a professional profile, I would be better off using a comma. Plus, the GrammarBook reference and others suggest that you should not enclose dashes with spaces. My example would look like this:

Out of college, I was hired as Accounting Clerk at XYZ Company—a manufacturer of widgets.

I don't like the appearance of this. So I will opt for a comma:

Out of college, I was hired as Accounting Clerk at XYZ Company, a manufacturer of widgets.

Thanks for the help!

PS. MuttQuad, I believe I did use an en dash in my original post. To show the en dash, I typed "alt^0150". An em dash would be "alt^0151". In order, hyphen, en dash, em dash:
- – —
The difference is small, but you can see it.

 

[Parla]

"XYZ Company" and "a manufacturer of widgets" are in apposition. A comma is correct.

 

[melbeach]

"XYZ Company" and "a manufacturer of widgets" are in apposition. A comma is correct.

Excellent! This makes it official. I know why I got into the habit of using dashes. Some times that I see two or more commas in a sentence that relate to sentence structure, it seems like a run-on sentence to me. Using a dash where I did in my example always looked more aesthetically pleasing to me. The comma version, though correct, looks like a run-on to me.

 

[MuttQuad]

Thanks for the help!

PS. MuttQuad, I believe I did use an en dash in my original post. To show the en dash, I typed "alt^0150". An em dash would be "alt^0151". In order, hyphen, en dash, em dash:
- – —
The difference is small, but you can see it.[/QUOTE]


Technically, an en dash is used between figures (numerals) or to denote passage of time. The em dash is the one you want, although I admit it is a little ugly. Fine typographers used to use a 3/4-em dash, which left a little space on each side, in order to get a more esthetically pleasing effect. Digital fonts don't seem to have them.