Grammatically Correct: The writer's essential guide to punctuation ...

PUNCTUATION
but I am sure that you will in your turn appreciate that a job which
takes seven years to do must clearly be more difficult than one that
can be pulled off in an afternoon and must therefore be charged at a
higher rate .... '
The babble from the phone became even more frantic.
'My dear Mrs Sauskind-or may I call you joyce? Very well then.
My dear Mrs Sauskind, let me say this. Do not worry yourself about
this bill, do not let it alarm or discomfit you. Do not, I beg you, let it
become a source of anxiety to you. just grit your teeth and pay it.'
-DouGLAS ADAMS, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
It is also appropriate to use an em dash when text that appears
to be heading for a predictable ending suddenly takes an unexpected
turn, or otherwise reaches a conclusion worthy of extra emphasis.
In this case, all parts of the sentence mesh grammatically; the dash
is not acting to divide grammatically independent structures, but
rather to draw special attention to what follows.
She planned the trip for months, got her hands on all the travel
information she could find, booked the hotel-and then called the
whole thing off.
The room was the picture of order, the mahogany furniture gleamed,
not an ornament on the shelves was out of place nor a painting on the
wall askew-the only note of discord was the corpse draped over the
back of the chesterfield .
. . . In a trice, I remember'd my Poem, writ last Night upon the
Tablecloth, and hastily flipp'd 'neath the Capon before the foul
Debauch.
I clamber' d out of Bed to seek for it, walkt gently upon the Floor
so as not to wake Tunewell again, flipp'd o'er the Tablecloth-and lo!
found that my Words were smudged out of the Linen! Bits of Charcoal
clung here and there where my Epick's grand Opening Lines had been!
-ERICA joNG, Fanny
DASH OR COLON?
The colon is ·another punctuation mark that acts to draw attention
to what follows it, and there is undeniably some overlap between
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