THE COMMA Use a comma to signal 'parenthetical' (non-essential) information within a sentence Parenthetical comments present the opinion of the writer and thus take the reader away from the normal flow of the text. Parenthetical information only adds extra comments or information, such as afterthoughts, that interrupt the normal flow of the sentence. As the name implies, a parenthetical can sometimes be punctuated with parentheses (sulkeet) instead of commas. We have already seen this parenthetical use of the commas with non-essential relative clauses. Parenthetical provide comments that serve as metatext (text that talks about and points readers to other parts of the text). In the examples below, notice how leaving out the words enclosed in commas would not change the message. In the future, those non-energy sectors most dependent on energy will suffer the greatest loss in production, as shown in table 1. It has been divided between fourteen cousins, three of whom are of Corsican extraction and thus, according to our French friends, impossible to deal with.   OTHER ALTERNATIVES Alternative ways of indicating and emphasizing this kind of information are to use either 'parentheses' (USA) / 'brackets' (UK) or dashes. Parentheses provide a stronger, more noticeable mark than a pair of commas. Parentheses also tend to enclose a non-essential element that interrupts the normal flow of the sentence with information that has little grammatical relation to the rest of the sentence. Similar to parentheses, dashes enclose elements that syntactically or emotionally interrupt the normal flow of the sentence with additional, though non-essential, information. More importantly. Dashes are considerably stronger than parentheses or commas, and are not used in all academic fields. Parentheses: It has been divided between fourteen cousins, three of whom are of Corsican extraction and thus (according to our French friends) impossible to deal with. Dashes: It has been divided between fourteen cousins, three of whom are of Corsican extraction and thus — according to our French friends — impossible to deal with.

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