Midsentence

Midsentence is a descriptive term for an interruption that occurs in the middle of a sentence before it reaches completion. It covers inserted phrases, dash- or parenthetic interruptions, and other deviations from a sentence’s expected flow.

In written language, midsentence interruptions are commonly indicated by punctuation such as em dashes, parentheses, or commas. They can serve to add emphasis, provide an aside, or signal hesitation, while not necessarily altering the overall end of the sentence. The effect is often to insert additional information or nuance without fully breaking the sentence’s syntactic unit.

In speech, midsentence phenomena reflect planning, hesitation, or emphasis. A speaker may pause, revise, or shift ideas mid-sentence; transcripts capture this with ellipses, em dashes, or bracketed notes indicating a correction.

Examples:

- The committee—midsentence, as the chair later explained—decided to postpone the vote.

- He paused mid-sentence, realizing he had said too much.

- I would propose, as I was saying—if I may interrupt—the following steps.

Notes:

The term midsentence is not a formal grammatical category; it is used mainly in descriptive linguistics and editorial practice. It overlaps with concepts such as mid-sentence parentheticals, interruptions, and discourse markers, and its exact interpretation can vary by style guide and linguistic framework.