Mustang Minute What are your defining values? Why are they important to you? How do you try or hope to apply them in your life? How can these help you be successful in the future? **Personal values are the beliefs, qualities, and philosophies that we hold about life, its purpose, and our own purpose.

Parentheses vs. Commas vs. Dashes Parentheses are the quiet whisper of an aside. Commas are the conversational voice of a friend walking by your desk. Dashes are the yowl of a pirate dashing into a fray. 

Parentheses Used to surround something that seems a bit out of place in a sentence – an aside, clarification, a commentary. Example The thirtieth anniversary of the eruption of Mount St. Helens (May 18, 1980) brought back vivid memories of ash and darkness. I’m heading out (movie night!), but I’ll call you in the morning. The date (May 18, 1980) is in parentheses in that sentence. It's something you want to tell the reader, but it isn't a necessary part of the sentence. If you leave it out, the reader still gets the whole point you wanted to make about revived memories because of the anniversary. The date isn't enough of a dramatic statement to merit dashes, and if you want to leave it in, another good reason to use parentheses is that the date already contains a comma between the day and the year, so to surround it with commas would make the sentence difficult to read. No excitement. Already has an internal comma. That leaves parentheses as the obvious choice. "Movie night" is more of an aside or comment than a clarification. "Movie night" is so far removed from the flow of the sentence that you wouldn't want to use commas around it. You could use dashes. It doesn't seem like enough of an interruption or a dramatic statement to me to merit dashes, but it's a judgment call. You could write the sentence a different way, of course, "I'm heading out for movie night, but I'll call you  in the morning," but it doesn't have the same friendly, happy feel. Parentheses seem right here. 

Dashes If you want to hang a spotlight on your words decorate them with dashes. You can use dashes the same way we just talked about using parentheses, to enclose fragments or whole sentences, but you’d better be sure your words are worthy of dashes. Dashes interrupt your sentences the way commas or parentheses don’t. Example: They fled through the woods, and then George – dear, sweet George the accountant – jumped out from behind a tree and stabbed them. There was only one thing missing from the pirate ship – pirates. Another difference between parentheses and dashes is that you always have to use two parentheses, they always enclose something, but it's fine to use one dash alone to introduce an important or exciting statement, or a statement that already has commas in it. You could write That dash is appropriate because the announcement that the pirates are missing is probably important or dramatic. In a sentence like that, where something is defined or expanded, you're choosing between the dash and a colon. You could just as properly write There was only one thing missing from the pirate ship: pirates. That sentence just doesn't have the same wild feeling as the sentence with the dash. A colon is a more stoic, buttoned up punctuation mark than a dash. And as before, you can also use one dash to introduce a longer, pedestrian statement if the statement already contains commas.

Commas They’re kind of dull. You should always consider using them because punctuation shouldn’t draw attention to itself. Commas don’t interrupt your sentence, so you use them when the words your enclosing are a natural part of your sentence and not some comment from left-field or a flamboyant statement. Example: My younger sister, Megan, will be visiting soon. Diamonds, which are expensive, aren’t something I buy very often. "Meghan" just tells you who my youngest sister is. You could set her name off with dashes as we did in the earlier sentence about George the accountant, or with parentheses like we did with a date earlier, but there's no reason to in a sentence like this one. 

In Summary As I’m sure you’ve noticed by now, you could make a legitimate argument for using at least two different punctuation marks in nearly every example sentence but these general rules may be helpful: Use parentheses when you want to enclose something that is incidental to the sentence, something that is background or almost unnecessary. Use dashes when you want to enclose or set-off something that deserves a lot of attention, is meant to interrupt your sentence, or already has commas or parentheses in it. Use commas to enclose things that belong firmly in the flow of your sentence. I know it can be frustrating that there aren’t hard and fast rules about when to use commas, parentheses, or dashes, but learning to use your judgment is part of finding your voice and becoming a better writer. In this case, the rules are more like the pirates code in Pirate’s of the Caribbean – they’re more what you’d call “guidelines” than actual rules. I bet Jack Sparrow never used a comma; he seems like a dash man to me.