grammar - How to punctuate interpolated interjections which are sentences


I am currently writing a formal piece of academic work in which I want to add a supplementary, parenthetical clause in the middle of another sentence. However, the supplemenatary clause is itself a stand-alone sentence. I don't want to bog you down with the technical guff from my work and so will illustrate with a different example:



Not only are penguins flightless birds [pause They are. pause], they are also aquatic.



Note that the example above is not a suggested format for the sentence (I am deliberately trying not to beg the question).


My question is:



  • How should I punctuate the bolded parenthetical phrase in the sentence above?


I am not asking about how to reformulate the sentence to avoid thorny punctuation issues. I would like to represent this sentence exactly how I might say it in a formal presentation without the addition of any ands or other reformulations.


My concerns are:




  1. I want to emphatically assert in my parenthetical phrase that penguins are flightless.




  2. The parenthetical phrase is effectively a stand-alone sentence inside another sentence. So I am unsure about whether the first word should/can be capitalised.




  3. I am unsure about any punctuation at the end of the clause before the first, larger sentence recommences.




  4. I'm unsure about any encompasing punctuation devices I could use before and after the phrase (in conjunction with the other issues mentioned in (1-3) above.




Of course, I could easily say and they are. However, that is not the sentence I'm trying to represent in the writing. Please do not recommend the and. I'm not interested. I want the words to be exactly and only the words used in my example.




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