Economic Punctuation

Although in a book about economics punctuation is not a vital aspect, it can go a long way to creating a solid argument. In a section about the correlation between abortion and the crime rate, the authors must be absolutely clear in their use of facts and observations so that the readers do not come away with an incorrect assumption. Punctuation can go a long way towards creating a clear and concise argument. The section goes as follows:

"One factor to look for would be a correlation between each state’s abortion rate and its crime rate. Sure enough, the states with the highest abortion rates in the 1970s experienced the greatest crime drops in the 1990s, while states with low abortion rates experienced smaller crime drops. (This correlation exists even when controlling for a variety of factors that influence crime: a state’s level of incarceration, number of police, and its economic situation.) Since 1985, states with high abortion rates have experienced a roughly 30 percent drop in crime relative to low-abortion states. (New York City had high abortion rates and lay within an early-legalizing state, a pair of facts that further dampen the claim that innovative policing caused the crime drop.) Moreover, there was no link between a given state’s abortion rate and its crime rate before the late 1980s—when the first cohort affected by legalized abortion was reaching its criminal prime—which is yet another indication that Roe v. Wade was indeed the event that tipped the crime scale."

There were two main aspects that stood out in this excerpt. First were the two parenthetical phrases. These points of clarification provide the context required to create such an argument; giving a complete picture of the situation. The first phrase dispels a possible claim that the low crime rates could have been affected by each state's law enforcement situation. The second phrase relates back to an example used earlier to show that the claim that "innovative police strategies" was the cause of the crime drop is, in fact, false. Finally, the dashes at the end of the passage, each provide a stopping point for the reader to stop and consider the statement. These provide a final punch to the passage, which finishes with a rock solid statement, backed up by all the information provided in the passage.