"Publish and prosper" is a series of posts about tips for researchers whose first language is not English but who submit papers to journals published in English. The series touches upon not only writing (spelling, grammar, punctuation, usage, and style) but everything else relevant to publishing research papers that journal editors wish their authors knew.

1. The colon to expand; the em dash to summarize

3. The colon thus signals a forward movement or a push. Yet another way to visualize the function of the colon is to think of an inverted funnel: after flowing through a narrow tube, the mouth suddenly widens and information begins to flow faster.

5. To visualize the function of the em dash, again think of a funnel: the material is packed closer together to force it to flow through the narrow end. In more literary text, the em dash also introduces a surprise, a twist in the tail as it were.

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