Colons are often used erroneously: The words preceding a colon must comprise a complete sentence like this one and the one before it—unless used for direct speech in quotations and dialogues. These sentences have at least one clause, a unit that can stand on its own—so if you were to isolate it, it would be complete. For example, ‘what you can find in this book is’ cannot stand on its own, so it is not a clause; the reader is waiting for more.
So, as I just mentioned, a complete sentence has one or more clauses, and a clause is the minimum unit of a sentence. What does this unit look like? It must have a subject, a verb, and a direct object, if it is obligatorily transitive (i.e. the verb chosen needs an object)—all other elements are optional.
Clause = subject + verb + (object):
What you can find in this book is this:
Subject = what you can find in this book
Verb = is
Object = this
Reasons to adopt a colon can be to do the following:
- to introduce a list
- to provide more information on what was written before the colon
- to introduce direct quotes
- after a speaker’s name in dialogues
There are many things I must do while reviewing: look out for typos, check for coherence, drink herbal tea, and make sure colons are used correctly. (list)
And…
When I write my first draft for a blog post, I pick one particular point to focus on: the whole post is about one subject. (Here it introduces more information.) (An em dash would be great here too.)
Not…
There are many things I must do while reviewing like: look out for typos, check for coherence, drink herbal tea, and make sure colons are used correctly.
Nor…
When I write my first draft for a blog post, I pick one particular point to focus on, the whole post is about one subject.
A quick note about the image above: I’ve included in each speech bubble the speaker’s name followed by a colon. This is not necessary inside a speech bubble because the cartoon graphic layout indicates who is speaking. You would normally use the colon after the speaker’s name in lines on a page not within an illustration. Below I have included the follow-up conversation between Mr Punctuation and Ms Colon in this plain page-line form:
Mr Punctuation: I’m glad to inform you, Ms Colon, of the following: the issues has been resolved.
Ms Colon: Really, Sir?
Mr Punctuation: Yes, it has. From now on more people will be using you.
Which other punctuation mark would you like to know more about?
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