ells1986 wrote:
Ron, WOULD it be correct to have a comma, rather than a dash in answer choice B? In other words, can you have back-to-back appositives set off by commas (given of course that the appositive was correct, as in B)?
yes, that would be fine. such punctuation would, however, cause the sentence to lose some of its emphasis, and would therefore weaken the overall thrust of the sentence. i.e., the dash is used in this case to emphasize the surprising nature of the statistic published afterward; if a comma were used instead, that emphasis on the surprising nature would be lost.
although this is not one of them, there are indeed some sentences in which the dashes are required for comprehension. here's an example:
the rate of the reaction is affected by three physical variables, pressure, concentration, and velocity. --> UNCLEAR (we don't know if "pressure, concentration, and velocity" ARE the three physical variables, or if this is in fact a list of
six factors)
the rate of the reaction is affected by three physical variables -- pressure, concentration, and velocity.--> CLEAR (in this case, the only reasonable interpretation is that pressure, concentration, and velocity ARE the three physical variables)