Wednesday, June 30, 2010

SQUIDS 101: Punctuation: Colons

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The colon. It can join two independent clauses as a semicolon does; it can link an independent and a related dependent clause as a comma or emdash do; or it can be used to introduce a list in which the items are separated by commas or semicolons. It is our house style (following the Chicago Manual, I believe) that complete sentences that follow a colon are to begin with a capped letter. Fragments or lists after the colon should begin with a lowercase letter.
The squid stared at me in surprise: It had evidently never seen a scuba diver shoot ink back at it before.

The squid opened its luminescent eyes: vast orbs glowing like Chinese lanterns.

Contact lenses for squids are available in the following colors: chartreuse, periwinkle, lilac, rose, and burnt sienna.
I hear the pause after a colon as longer than the pause after a semicolon because there should be two spaces after the mark as opposed to one (and the greater the space accorded to anything in a story, the greater the weight it has), and because the cap at the start of a new sentence carries its own weight.

5 comments:

  1. Thanks for this series ... Just FYI, CMS differs from your house style on capitalization after a colon. Here's CMS 6.64: "When a colon in used within a sentence, the first word following the colon is lowercased unless it is a proper name. When a colon introduces two or more sentences (as in multiple questions), or when it introduces a speech in dialogue or an extract, the first word following it is capitalized."

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  2. Huh! I did not know that. Thanks, Jon.

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  3. Wow I've always been bad at knowing how to use colons or where to use them. Thanks for clearing it up.

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  4. The colon is by far my favorite punctuation mark: It's like a drum roll.

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  5. If you were to cut the video at a difference frame, that difference frame and all subsequent difference frames would refer to a preceding reference frame that doesn't exist any more.

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