The colon is used chiefly to introduce a list, quotation, or explanation following an independent clause complete sentence. The semicolon indicates a stronger division than the comma. Explore LLCC. Academic Programs. Career Training. Community Education. My LLCC. Susan faced a decision: She could RSVP to the reunion organizer saying that she would be there, and then just not show up.
She could RSVP with a fictitious excuse and stay home. Or she could suck it up, and go to the reunion despite her reluctance to face all her former classmates. That means no long, protracted expositions as in the days of Clarence Darrow and Charles Dickens. People today—especially people searching for information online—want the facts quickly!
If the items in your list are single words or short fragments, it is advisable to put no punctuation at the end of each element. Whether or not you capitalize is up to you.
Capitals are optional in this example. However, in my opinion, a capital first letter emphasizes the point a bit better. If the list is comprised of full sentences, it is best to punctuate and capitalize as full sentences. Colons can be overused easily. Some people think colons and semicolons make their work seem more professional.
But overuse of these punctuation marks can actually make your writing harder to read. When to use a colon can be tricky. Become a better writer. Find out more here. After having three children and raising them at home for a decade, she went to law school and graduated Cum Laude in After years of criminal law practice, she stepped back to homeschool her boys through High School.
When she is not schooling her kids, writing novels on the criminal justice system, or writing for Magoosh, she enjoys spending as much time as she can with her husband and kids having fun! View all posts. In two instances, you use fragments before the colon. Do not use a colon after a sentence fragment, ever.
This is a nice article, and I have passed it along to others as an explanation on the proper use of a colon. However, I disagree with the way you used it in the Two Basic Formats section. My interpretation is that you can use it before a list if a heading not just a phrase precedes it.
I would suggest that you should complete the sentence before a vertical list unless you are just using a heading or title. In other words, I disagree with using it after an incomplete sentence that is associated with a paragraph full of complete sentences.
This is the very doubt I was hoping to clear up by reading this article, but instead, it has left me more confused. Magoosh blog comment policy : To create the best experience for our readers, we will only approve comments that are relevant to the article, general enough to be helpful to other students, concise, and well-written! The colon can be used to emphasize a phrase or single word at the end of a sentence.
An em dash can be used for the same purpose. In the second example below, an em dash is more common than a colon, though the use of a colon is nevertheless correct. The colon is used in biblical references to separate chapter from verse, with no space before or after the colon. The colon is used to separate the volume from page numbers of a cited work, with no space before or after the colon.
Grammatical uses of the colon Introducing a list The colon is used to introduce a list of items. Example The bookstore specializes in three subjects: art, architecture, and graphic design.
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