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What's on the Docket for March 2024?

Blockbuster Film, Super Tuesday, March Madness, and the Equinox

We’ve got one extra day in February this year—we wish you a happy leap day tomorrow!—and then we head full-steam into March. Needless to say, many of us in the chillier parts of the Northern Hemisphere are anxiously await spring blooms and later sunsets. So thankfully, in just under three weeks, on March 19, we’ll switch our clocks forward and gain what feels like several more hours to our afternoons. 

What else should you look forward to in March?

• Beginning on March 1, Dune: Part 2 begins opening around the world, the first blockbuster film of the year and the star-studded follow-up to Part 1, released in late 2021. The first big animated movie of 2024, Kung Fu Panda 4, opens the following week, while the Kate Winslet fronted political satire The Regime debuts on MAX on March 3. And don’t forget the Academy Awards on March 10!
• Super Tuesday—the biggest day in the United States presidential primary nominating process—happens March 5. Sixteen states and the territory of American Samoa will vote, and hundreds of delegates will be up for grabs. Close to 20 other states and territories will vote throughout the rest of the month, indicating that election season is officially in full swing.
• The 2024 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament begins in a few weeks, with Selection Sunday happening on March 17, while the First Four games will be played on the 19th and 20th. The tournament will be wrapped up in early April.

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Advice for Hyphenating

Figuring out where to place a hyphen is not an easy task. Even those of us who have learned the rules many times over find ourselves fiddling with whether a hyphen is needed and if so whether it should be placed here or there. 

Here are a few general rules to help save you time with your hyphen placements. 

• Pay attention to compound adjectives, as the use or absence of a hyphen can make a big difference. Take the example from our style guide: "I saw a man-eating alligator" vs. "I saw a man eating alligator." The use of a hyphen changes the whole meaning of the sentence, so make sure you are conveying what you intend to say!
• Don’t hyphenate after words that end with “ly.” For example, “It was a wildly-successful film” is not correct since “wildly” is an adverb that is already modifying “successful." A hyphen would be redundant and create clutter. 
• Use dictionaries like Merriam-Webster or programs like Grammarly or spell check (and cross-reference between the two) to check whether words and phrases need hyphens. Resources like dictionaries will show that a phrase like the idiom “side to side” doesn’t need hyphens, while “year-end” as a noun or adverb does need one. 

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Featured Articles of the Week

From mysteries off the coast of Chile to popular colors in country's flags, these are our featured articles of the week. Thank you to all of our amazing contributors!

• LetterPile: Poem: The One by  Ben Patridge
• The CrimeWire: Cari Farver and the Deadly Duplicity of Liz Golyar by  Natalie Howes
• Soapboxie: Blue-White-Blue Flags Around the World by  Errah Caunca 
• Owlcation: Rapa Nui: The Mystery of Easter Island by  B Acred