Hooray for One of My Favorite Magazines

I’m referring to Scientific American. My wife calls it my porn because I read it cover to cover, and have since high school. Even though they don’t use the oxford comma, harrumpf.

One subtlety of punctuation is how to use the three horizontal punctuation marks, the hyphen, the N-dash, and the M-dash. These folks get them right.

• Hyphen—use it to connect compounds
• N-dash—indicates a range
• M-dash—indicates a break

From an article in the July 2020 issue (pages 56f).

In 1990 only three-day forecasts were 80 percent accurate or better. Today the three-, five- and seven-day outlooks are at that level.

Many more factors must be considered in a 3–4 week forecast.

And they consider winds in the stratosphere, which extends from roughly 10 to 48 kilometers above the earth’s surface—higher than where airplanes fly.

Can’t beat a good example, even if they left out the oxford comma (you noticed it, didn’t you?)

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I think I mentioned this topic before. Here’s another good example of how punctuation can change the meaning of a phrase.

As written in the comic, you have a compound phrase about the two things that the person is doing. The original is “downward-facing dog.” “Downward-facing” is a compound adjective describing “dog.”

So the punctuation makes the joke!

This can be called a style issue, or maybe even a good taste issue, but it’s a readability issue.

Here’s the lesson. You probably won’t see the errors:

• First, you should put quotes around “Me” because you are referring to the word itself. Using italics is okay, too, depending on what your style guide says. The comic is funny because the cartoonist didn’t put the quotes around “me” in the first panel, leading you to think the horse was going to talk about himself, not the word.
• Second, that slash between “him” and “herself.” Use “or.” (Or use “and” if that’s appropriate.) Many people use the slash when they can’t decide which conjunction to use. Don’t be lazy! Decide!
• sigh. I may as well mention a third possible mistake. When you have two (or more) compound words and want to mention the second part only once, put a hyphen after that first separated part. Write “him- or herself.”

Back in the days of typewriters, all you had was the hyphen, and if you wanted something stronger, you typed two hyphens. But nowadays, with proportional fonts and all, we have the hyphen, the N-dash, and the M-dash. (Typographers, with their fonts and printing presses, always had these, by the way.)

Trouble is, lots of folks don’t know how to use all these professional tools. But I ran into an article the other day written by someone who did! The organization is Axios, the series is Axios Science, and the writer is Andrew Freedman. Link:
https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-science-b9b38725-e940-4c81-867d-64c7cac89f53.html

First, a hyphen, used correctly:

They used high-resolution climate models based on various emissions scenarios to project future changes in key cloud forest variables.

“high-resolution” is a compound adjective. Correct.

Next, an N-dash:

The study finds that in about 25–45 years, 70%–86% of páramo are likely to be drier or “be subject to tree invasion.”

You use the N-dash to indicate a range; in this case “25 to 45” and “70 to 86.” Correct.

Finally the M-dash, in the next article:

Considerable time is spent focusing on whether a planet is in its star’s “habitable zone” — an orbit in which liquid water can be sustained on the surface — but that alone can’t predict whether life will exist.

Use M-dashes for some kind of break, or as a strong set of parentheses to set off something important, which he did here. Technically he doesn’t need the spaces around the M-dashes (I don’t use the spaces) but it’s allowed. Maybe he wanted to strengthen the effect.

Here’s the picture that went with the first article:

Commas separate things. Dates from years, cities from states, and so on. Another thing they separate is direct address, as shown below:

The more astute among you might suggest that the maybe guy was using an appositive, explaining what was to be eaten. Good point, but that’s a bigger break than a comma can handle, so in that case, he should have used an M-dash:

Would you like the all-you-can-eat—shrimp!

The hyphens and the cook are both correct, by the way.