Sentences — Complex

Don’t mistake em dashes with hyphens and en dashes! Table Table tbl-hyph) makes the distinction clear.

Punctuation Name Purpose Example
- Hyphen Compound nouns High-throughput sequencing
– En-dash “Through” 4 – 6 hours
— Em-dash Strong break Various uses
Table 1: Hyphenation and dashes. The choice of using spaces before and after en and em dashes is dictated by your style guide — rules will vary.

Subordinating conjunctions (see table Table tbl-SubCon) are key to building complex sentences.

after once until
although provided that when
as rather than whenever
because since where
before so that whereas
even if than wherever
even though that whether
if though while
in order that unless why
Table 2: Subordinating conjunctions.

The microbiota is a topic of intense research, since it plays an important role in the health of broiler chickens.

The microbiota, a topic of intense research, plays an important role in the health of broiler chickens.

The microbiota — a topic of intense research — plays an important role in the health of broiler chickens.

Em dashes

The em dash is a hard stop, so use it to introduce important or dramatic information in the middle or end of a sentence. In this case it’s a bit too dramatic.

The microbiota — the microflora in the gastrointestinal tract — plays an important role in the health of broiler chickens.

Knowledge on the human microbiota is mainly motivated by its adverse effect on health — it is implicated in obesity.

It’s also what you’ll find in titles:

Intestinal microbiota and metabolites — Implications for broiler chicken health and performance

Parentheses let the reader know they can safely skip over this information. It’s information that is good to know, but may not be really crucial — maybe they even know it already. It’s why information like references appear here. The exception may be acronyms, which typically appear in parentheses but are important if the reader didn’t already know them.

Parentheses

The microbiota (the microflora in the gastrointestinal tract) plays an important role in the health of broiler chickens.

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