Wouldn't the alternative rather be to use commas there, not a hyphen?
"Sometimes writing for money, rather than for art or pleasure, is really quite enjoyable."
In your head, do you read those differently?
"Sometimes writing for money, rather than for art or pleasure, is really quite enjoyable."
In your head, do you read those differently?
“Sometimes writing for money, rather than for art, or pleasure, is really quite enjoyable.”
– this seems awkward to me. This version, though:
“Sometimes writing for money—rather than for art, or pleasure—is really quite enjoyable.”
Isn’t that more fluid?
I think that changes the meaning, since it’s now a list of 3 items with an Oxford comma, rather than two lists, with the first list having 1 item, and the second list having 2 items. And I’m having a rough time even making sense of such revised meaning.
Expressed as pseudo-code, I read the original intent of that sentence as:
“money and not(art or pleasure) == enjoyable”
and that can be broken into
“((money and not art) or (money and not pleasure)) == enjoyable