April 28, 2008
The colon: an unappreciated mark with an unfortunate name
Next in our series on punctuation marks is the colon.
This unsung duo of dots has a myriad of uses. Beyond simply indicating the time of day, the colon has many more essential—some might say exciting—duties. You see, colons are used to introduce content that explains the previous sentence. In a way, they fill us with anticipation and make us ask ourselves, “What’s coming next?”
Some of the most common uses for the colon:
to introduce a series
My garden is blooming with many spring flowers: tulips, daffodils, hyacinth, and grape hyacinth.
to introduce long quotes
(basically any quote longer than a sentence)
to introduce an explanation
The Red Sox drive me crazy: Last year they win the World Series, this year they’re swept by the Devil Rays.
to introduce a definition
(see the title of this post)
for emphasis
I have only two passions in life: grammar and chocolate.
in a business letter greeting
Dear Mr. Jones:
for time of day
7:30 p.m.
to separate biblical chapter and verse numbers
1 Corinthians 13:13
Important note: You should only capitalize the first word after a colon if it’s the start of a complete sentence (like this one).
I had many a pun ready to use in this post, but I decided to keep it clean and present only the straight poop about the colon (groan) … OK, I used the word “duties,” but that was not deliberate.
Filed by rebecca at 8:57 am under Grammar guide
You’re correct, the grammatical colon is a wonderful device.
Do you have any idea how the unfortunate name originated? Your post inflamed my curiosity.
Hi, Devon -
Great question! Now I need to go look that up.
(Well done with “inflamed” by the way. Pretty funny — although probably not if you have an inflamed colon … ouch!)
I’m a huge colon fan (written colons, that is, though the other kind are probably fine, too). Thanks for a timely post, rebecca. I love these tidbits. Makes us better writers to be reminded of the rules. :))
Hee hee. I like how you were all useful and I was just all ranty about the exclamation marks. And ‘colon’ is a HILARIOUS name. We had a great game of Outburst with that once.
Ten parts of the digestive tract:
Stomach!
Large intestine!
Small intestine!
Colon!
Semi-Colon!
It was pretty awesome. English majors should never play party games.