So bacteria and spoil-ready organisms must look elsewhere fo

[gunadekar_abhijeet]

Hi,

I was reading through one of the articles of Smithsonian magazine website and came across below sentence:

So bacteria and spoil-ready organisms must look elsewhere for a home- the life expectancy inside of honey is just too low


Could anyone please explain what kind of structure or modifier does it have?

I was not able to understand the structure here.

What I understood from above sentence is that
the life expectancy inside of honey is just too low -> So bacteria and spoil-ready organisms must look elsewhere for a home

Thanks!!

Source: Smithsonian Magazine article

[RonPurewal]

Yeah, that's right.
The dash here separates an entire sentence that serves as a description/explanation.

Strictly speaking, I wouldn't call it a "modifier", because it's not grammatically a modifier. (Modifiers are not complete sentences by themselves; they are only pieces of sentences. That's why they have to be precisely "stuck" to some noun or action in a full sentence"”they can't exist alone.)
But, yes, its purpose is to explain what was stated previously.

You couldn't use commas to do this, because commas can't block off an entire sentence.

[RonPurewal]

See #132 in your OG13 (about heirloom tomatoes) for a GMAC example of this kind of thing.

[abhifeb13]

Thanks Ron. That explains effectively and perfectly :-)... Will also look at OG 13 example that you mentioned in the later post.

Yeah, that's right.
The dash here separates an entire sentence that serves as a description/explanation.

Strictly speaking, I wouldn't call it a "modifier", because it's not grammatically a modifier. (Modifiers are not complete sentences by themselves; they are only pieces of sentences. That's why they have to be precisely "stuck" to some noun or action in a full sentence"”they can't exist alone.)
But, yes, its purpose is to explain what was stated previously.

You couldn't use commas to do this, because commas can't block off an entire sentence.

[RonPurewal]

ok!