You could write the sentence a different way, of course, “I’m heading out for movie night, but I’ll call you in the morning,” but it doesn’t have the same friendly, happy feel. It doesn’t seem like enough of an interruption or a dramatic statement to me to merit dashes, but it’s a judgment call. “Movie night” is so far removed from the flow of the sentence that you wouldn’t want to use commas around it. “Movie night” is more of an aside or comment than a clarification. I’m heading out (movie night!), but I’ll call you in the morning. That leaves parentheses as the obvious choice. The date isn’t enough of a dramatic statement to merit dashes, and if you want to leave it in, another good reason to use parentheses is that the date already contains a comma between the day and the year, so to surround it with commas would make the sentence difficult to read. If you leave it out, the reader still gets the whole point you wanted to make about revived memories because of the anniversary. It’s something you want to tell the reader, but it isn’t a necessary part of the sentence. The date (May 18, 1980) is in parentheses in that sentence. Helens (May 18, 1980) brought back vivid memories of ash and darkness. The 30th anniversary of the eruption of Mount St. Here’s an example of one way to use parentheses to add additional information: Sometimes when you go back to edit your first draft, you’ll find that you can rework your sentence to include the parenthetical statement or simply delete the things in parentheses, unless they’re something like irreverent quips that are an intentional part of your tone. You use them to surround something that seems a bit out of place in the sentence-an aside, a clarification, or a commentary. Let’s start with those quiet parentheses.
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