In modern English usage, a complete sentence precedes a colon, while a list, description, explanation, or definition follows it. The elements which follow the colon may or may not be a complete sentence: since the colon is preceded by a sentence, it is a complete sentence whether what follows the colon is another sentence or not. While it is acceptable to capitalise the first letter after the colon in American English, it is not the case in British English, except where a proper noun immediately follows a colon. ;Colon used before list :
Daequan was so hungry that he ate everything in the house: chips, cold pizza, pretzels and dip, hot dogs, peanut butter, and candy. ;Colon used before a description :''Bertha is so desperate that she'll date anyone, even William: he's uglier than a squashed toad on the highway, and that's on his good days.'' ;Colon before definition :''For years while I was reading Shakespeare's
Othello and criticism on it, I had to constantly look up the word "egregious" since the villain uses that word: outstandingly bad or shocking.'' ;Colon before explanation :
I guess I can say I had a rough weekend: I had chest pain and spent all Saturday and Sunday in the emergency room. Some writers use fragments (incomplete sentences) before a colon for emphasis or stylistic preferences (to show a character's voice in literature), as in this example: :
Dinner: chips and juice. What a well-rounded diet I have. The Bedford Handbook describes several uses of a colon. For example, one can use a colon after an independent clause to direct attention to a list, an
appositive, or a quotation, and it can be used between independent clauses if the second summarizes or explains the first. In non-literary or non-expository uses, one may use a colon after the salutation in a formal letter, to indicate hours and minutes, to show proportions, between a title and subtitle, and between city and publisher in bibliographic entries.
Luca Serianni, an Italian scholar who helped to define and develop the colon as a punctuation mark, identified four punctuational modes for it:
syntactical-deductive,
syntactical-descriptive,
appositive, and
segmental.
Syntactical-deductive The colon introduces the
logical consequence, or effect, of a fact stated before. :
There was only one possible explanation: the train had never arrived. Syntactical-descriptive In this sense the colon introduces a description; in particular, it makes explicit the elements of a set. :
I have three sisters: Daphne, Rose, and Suzanne. Syntactical-descriptive colons may separate the numbers indicating
hours,
minutes, and
seconds in abbreviated measures of time. :
The concert begins at 21:45. :
The rocket was launched at 09:15:05. British English and
Australian English, however, more frequently use a
point for this purpose: :
The programme will begin at 8.00 pm. :
You will need to arrive by 14.30. A colon is also used in the descriptive location of a book verse if the book is divided into verses, such as in the
Bible or the
Quran: :"Isaiah 42:8" :"Deuteronomy 32:39" :"Quran 10:5"
Appositive :
Luruns could not speak: he was drunk. An appositive colon also separates the
subtitle of a work from its principal title. (In effect, the example given above illustrates an appositive use of the colon as an abbreviation for the conjunction "because".) Dillon has noted the impact of colons on scholarly articles, but the reliability of colons as a predictor of quality or impact has also been challenged. In titles, neither needs to be a complete sentence as titles do not represent
expository writing: :
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi Segmental Like a
dash or
quotation mark, a segmental colon introduces
speech. The segmental function was once a common means of indicating an unmarked quotation on the same line. The following example is from the grammar book ''
The King's English'': :
Benjamin Franklin proclaimed the virtue of frugality: A penny saved is a penny earned. This form is still used in British industry-standard templates for written performance
dialogues, such as in a
play. The colon indicates that the words following an character's name are spoken by that character. :
Patient: Doctor, I feel like a pair of curtains. :
Doctor: Pull yourself together! The uniform visual pattern of <character_nametag : character_spoken_lines> placement on a script page assists an actor in scanning for the lines of their assigned character during rehearsal, especially if a script is undergoing rewrites between rehearsals.
Use of capitals Use of capitalization or lowercase after a colon varies. In
British English, and in most
Commonwealth countries, the word following the colon is in lowercase unless it is normally capitalized for some other reason, as with
proper nouns and
acronyms. British English also capitalizes a new sentence introduced by a colon's
segmental use.
American English permits writers to similarly capitalize the first word of any
independent clause following a colon. This follows the guidelines of some modern American style guides, including those published by the
Associated Press and the
Modern Language Association.
The Chicago Manual of Style, however, requires capitalization only when the colon introduces a direct quotation, a direct question, or two or more complete sentences. In many
European languages, the colon is usually followed by a lowercase letter unless the upper case is required for other reasons, as with British English.
German usage requires capitalization of
independent clauses following a colon.
Dutch further capitalizes the first word of any quotation following a colon, even if it is not a complete sentence on its own.
Spacing and parentheses In print, a thin space was traditionally placed before a colon and a thick space after it. In modern
English-language printing, no space is placed before a colon and a single space is placed after it. In
French-language typing and printing, the traditional rules are preserved. One or two spaces may be and have been used after a colon. The older convention (designed to be used by
monospaced fonts) was to use
two spaces after a colon. In modern typography, a colon will be placed outside the closing
parenthesis introducing a list. In very early English typography, it could be placed inside, as seen in
Roger Williams' 1643 book about the Native American languages of New England. ==Usage in other languages==