Meta Forestplot : Express 95% interval as (x-y) rather than default [x,y]

[Jennifer Yo]

Hello

Apologies that this may be a very basic question. However, I have yet to find the answer despite reading through previous forum posts and the STATA meta forestplot manual.

For illustration purposes I will use the example dataset from http://www.stata-press.com/data/r16/metaesbin.dta

meta esize tdead tsurv cdead csurv

meta forestplot, cibind(parentheses)

Will give a forestplot like this:

My question is:
How do I get the 95% confidence interval to be expressed as eg. (-2.08 -0.88) rather than (-2.08, 0.88)
Thank you very much for any guidance.

Jennifer

[Tiago Pereira]

I do not know any more efficient strategy, but you can always use the graph editor and manually change things. However, keep in mind that
it might be confusing to represent 95% CIs as (lower hyphen upper).

[Nick Cox]

I agree with Tiago Pereira. There is too much scope for comfort for a minus sign to be confused with a hyphen (or en dash, or em dash).

[Jennifer Yo]

Thank you both, yes I agree that it is confusing. Unfortunately it (hyphen) was a journal's editorial requirements for the forest plot.