avoid - Mabel presented Harry with a choice umbrella of: her own.Īnd then there is the colon that introduces a list or series.
avoid - The umbrella's opening mechanism was: hopelessly jammed.
avoid - Harry's favorite umbrella: broke.
avoid - The sheer size of Mabel's umbrella collection: is stunning.
We note in this aside that a colon is not used to separate a subject from its predicate a noun from its verb a verb from its object or complement or a preposition from its object: The word "parasol" is in apposition to the noun phrase "another name altogether." How NOT to Use Colons "Oh Harry," replied Mabel, "a similar object that protects against sun has another name altogether: parasol." The clause following the colon is in apposition to "this" (which is a pronoun referring to "the crux of it all," if we're going to get technical about it). "But Mabel," Harry pressed, "isn't the crux of it all in truth this: an umbrella is a collapsible shield for protection against weather generally?" The noun phrase "dry fur" is in apposition to the "one thing" noun phrase on the other side of the colon. "Harry," said Mabel, "umbrellas are about one thing: dry fur." (Reminder: An appositive is a noun or noun phrase that refers to the same thing as another noun or noun phrase in the same sentence, and is usually right next to that other noun or noun phrase, like in "my neighbor the doctor." The two nouns/noun phrases-in this case "my neighbor" and "the doctor"-are said to stand "in grammatical apposition," which means that they have the same syntactical relation to the rest of the sentence.) The appositive that follows the colon can be an amplifying word, phrase, or clause: Here, the clause following the colon restates what precedes it.Ī colon can also introduce something that acts as an appositive. Mabel was having none of it: she remained unmoved. Harry's clause, which would begin with a capital "I" if that were our style, amplifies what precedes it. "Sun too beats down: is not an umbrella also appropriate protection against sun?" "But why limit it, then, to wet weather?" Harry wanted to know. (There of course would be a capital letter if the first word of the phrase were a proper noun or acronym.) Being a phrase and all, there is no capital letter. Here, the phrase following the colon illustrates what comes before it. Mabel the Cat was adamant that Harry recognize the usefulness of umbrellas for all wet weather: as protection against rain, sleet, and snow. Lowercase also happens to be Merriam-Webster's style.) Be consistent: capitalize the first letter in every clause that follows a colon, or always use lowercase. (Note that in British English the style is typically to go lowercase. As a clause-it has its own subject and verb and could in fact function alone as its own sentence, albeit a sentence of the question variety-it certainly looks like something that can start with a capital letter, but whether it does or not is simply a matter of style. Note that what follows the colon is not capitalized, but it could be. In this example, what comes after the colon explains just what the argument referred to in the first part of the sentence is all about. Harry the Dog and Mabel the Cat were having an impassioned argument about umbrellas: are umbrellas properly to be used only for rain? Let's first look at some colons introducing clauses and phrases that explain, illustrate, amplify, and restate what's come before: (Reminder: clauses and phrases are both groups of words within a sentence the basic difference between them is that a clause has its own subject and verb, while a phrase does not.)Ĭolons are also hard to find in stock photography, so just go with it. In the running prose that we encounter in books, magazines, articles, and the like, colons are mostly used to introduce a clause or a phrase that explains, illustrates, amplifies, or restates what precedes them. (This is quite a different function from that of the semicolon, which is mostly used to separate two independent sentence parts that are related in meaning.) It's typically a mark of introduction, used to let the reader know that what follows the colon has been pointed to or described by what precedes the colon. We all know the colon, right? It's a punctuation mark that looks like two dots stacked, like a period with another period hovering above it : For example, this summary could be written as "Colons can introduce many things: descriptors, quotes, lists, and more." What Is a Colon? Often they are used to introduce a quote or a list that satisfies the previous statement. Colons (:) introduce clauses or phrases that serve to describe, amplify, or restate what precedes them.
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