3 ms·

Wouldn't the alternative rather be to use commas there, not a hyphen? "Sometimes writing for money, rather than for art or pleasure, is really quite enjoyable.

• jameshart 4y ago
  Personally, I think this sentence would benefit from a comma before the ‘or’. And in that case we could probably benefit from a clearer way of setting aside the parenthetical. “Sometimes writing for money, rather than for art, or pleasure, is really quite enjoyable.” – this seems awkward to me. This version, though: “Sometimes writing for money—rather than for art, or pleasure—is really quite enjoyable.” Isn’t that more fluid?
  • noizejoy 4y ago
    > “Sometimes writing for money, rather than for art, or pleasure, is really quite enjoyable.” I think that changes the meaning, since it’s now a list of 3 items with an Oxford comma, rather than two lists, with the first list having 1 item, and the second list having 2 items. And I’m having a rough time even making sense of such revised meaning. Expressed as pseudo-code, I read the original intent of that sentence as: “money and not(art or pleasure) == enjoyable” and that can be broken into “((money and not art) or (money and not pleasure)) == enjoyable