Writing: Nonrestrictive and parenthetical elements — Harder example

by the time the antidote arrived 87 days late the men had already turned to stone so I don't know what type of problem they had but turning to stone that seems pretty pretty serious but let's look at the let's look at the grammar of it so what's underlined by the time the antidote arrived - 87 days late - the men had already turned to stone so this seems like a pretty good use of dashes 87 days late that's a it's a parenthetical it's they're giving us a little bit of extra information that is not necessary it's not necessary for the sentence you could remove what's you could take this part out right over here you could take this part out and it won't it won't and it would still be a sentence that gives the same meaning by the time the antidote arrived the man had already turned to stone so you could do that but adding that 87 days late gives you a little it gives you some extra information gives you some extra context for what's going on here so this parenthetical it seems like a good place to do it and it seems good to do it with dashes this 87 days late hey that's a pretty that's a pretty strong thing that you would want to insert in there to add some important context to the sentence and you'd want the - on both sides so I like it the way that it's written now these other choices you wouldn't want to start with a comma and end with a dash and you wouldn't want to start with a dash and end with a comma and you need something to separate it off you wouldn't say by the time the antidote arrived 87 days late the men had already turned to stone this this right over here this is right here is a parenthetical you could put parentheses around it but I actually like putting dashes here because it's very important context a parent of parentheses that's for a parenthetical said hey maybe it's nice to know it's kind of a cute thing you could make make a little bit of a an aside but dashes or hey this gives you some powerful context I think and it over arrived 87 days late so so I definitely so this one you need some type of punctuation to mark off the 87 days late so I would rule that one out as well