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Only one of the following sentences is correct. Which?

1. I decided not to go to the inauguration; it would be incredibly crowded; with the rest of the committee.
2. I decided not to go to the inauguration (It would be incredibly crowded.) with the rest of the committee.
3. I decided not to go to the inauguration – it would be incredibly crowded – with the rest of the committee.
4. I decided not to go to the inauguration (it would be incredibly crowded) with the rest of the committee.
5. I decided not to go to the inauguration, it would be incredibly crowded; with the rest of the committee.
6. I decided not to go to the inauguration, it would be incredibly crowded, with the rest of the committee.

If you chose sentence #2, you were … close. Sentence #2 is not correct. But it comes closer to being correct than the other four incorrect sentences. Sentence #1 is flawed as well. So are sentences #3 and #5. Sentence #6 is wrong, too. (What I’m doing here is giving you the run-around, because if, after listing the six sentences, I were to come right out and say sentence #4 is the correct choice, that would take all the fun out of it. But there you have it. Sentence #4 is the winner.)

But why?

The reason is simple: The others are incorrect. Sentences #1, #5 and #6 make a valiant effort to push commas and semicolons to do what they cannot. Sentence number three – the one with the dashes – comes closer to acceptability, but not nearly close enough. Using dashes to embed a complete sentence within another sentence is tricky (if not dangerous) business, and should never be attempted at home.

Sentences #2 and #4 are essentially the same, except that the embedded sentence in #2 goes obnoxiously far in trying to make itself look like a sentence. My grandmother used to say that if a complete sentence is cowardly enough to try to hide inside another sentence, it doesn’t deserve to take its beginning capitalization and ending punctuation with it. In short, it should be stripped of its sentence-ness.

That’s why sentence #2 is not correct. Its embedded sentence has ostentatiously clung to its first capital letter and ending period. Yes, it made the right choice in pulling parentheses around it – rather than commas, semicolons and dashes – but that doesn’t excuse it from the other infractions.

So the next time you’re sitting around embedding complete sentences inside other sentences (some enthusiasts do this every Friday night) remember the rule: Don’t capitalize the embedded sentence, and don’t use the ending punctuation. If you follow these rules, you will live a long and happy life.

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