Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2018 July 6

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July 6

English punctuation

I'm not sure what punctuation is appropriate for the following sentence: "... this plasmid was modified by addition of a 2A sequence – a so-called self-cleavage motif – and a sequence encoding puromycin N-acetyl transferase."

The 2A sequence is a so-called self-cleavage motif. Should "a so-called self-cleavage motif" be delineated by hyphens, commas or a semi-colon and then a comma? --129.215.47.59 (talk) 17:11, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

Seems fine to me.--Khajidha (talk) 17:50, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

Definitely not a semi-colon/comma. Your options are commas, brackets, or hyphens.

• Hyphens work well.
• Parentheses work just as well: "... this plasmid was modified by addition of a 2A sequence (a so-called self-cleavage motif) and a sequence encoding puromycin N-acetyl transferase."
• Commas work, although not as well, because the sentence could be ambiguous to those not in the scientific know, as it might suggest the plasmid was modified by 3 things rather than 2. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 23:27, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

I agree with Jack that parentheses are an option, but you don't want hyphens; you want either spaced en dashes – as you used in your original post – or unspaced em dashes. The spaced en dashes are more common in British usage, whereas the unspaced em dashes are more common in U.S. usage. See MOS:DASH, which strives to cover the dash bases. Deor (talk) 02:06, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

Forgive me, for pernickety punctuator as I am, I am not a particularly pernickety punctuator. :) -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 06:37, 7 July 2018 (UTC)