Precisely. Punctuation such as commas, dashes and parentheses are the written equivalent of the pauses that occur in spoken language, and each should be used appropriately to achieve the desired effect.
Eg, consider the following examples:
Quote:
He said, with a certain amount of reluctance, that he would do as I asked.
He said - with a certain amount of reluctance - that he would do as I asked.
He said (with a certain amount of reluctance) that he would do as I asked.
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The use of the three different types of punctuation results in three very different feels to the sentence.