Colons appear in several standard or conventional places in writing. Here are a few examples:. Example: Kurlansky, M. Salt: A world history. Example incorrect :The very best peaches are: those that are grown in the great state of Georgia. Example incorrect : My favorite cake is made of: carrots, flour, butter, eggs, and cream cheese icing. This violates the rule that the material preceding the colon must be a complete thought.
Look, for example, at the following sentence:. Example incorrect : There are many different types of paper, including: college ruled, wide ruled, and plain copy paper. The colon should simply be removed. Ask yourself a question: does the material preceding the colon stand on its own?
One way to tell if the colon has been properly used is to look only at the words that come in front of the colon. Do they make a complete thought? If not, you may be using the colon improperly.
Check above to see if you have made one of the most common mistakes. If it is important that you follow one of these styles precisely, be sure to use the appropriate manual to look up the rule. If the following phrase is a complete independent clause, you may choose to capitalize it or not. Whichever approach you choose, be sure to be consistent throughout your paper. Example with an independent clause, showing two different approaches to capitalization: The commercials had one message: The geeks shall inherit the earth.
The first thing to know when talking about dashes is that they are almost never required by the laws of grammar and punctuation. To set off material for emphasis. Think of dashes as the opposite of parentheses. Where parentheses indicate that the reader should put less emphasis on the enclosed material, dashes indicate that the reader should pay more attention to the material between the dashes.
Dashes add drama—parentheses whisper. Dashes can be used for emphasis in several ways: A single dash can emphasize material at the beginning or end of a sentence. Example: After eighty years of dreaming, the elderly man realized it was time to finally revisit the land of his youth—Ireland.
For instance:. The semi-colon is often used to join together two independent clauses — in other words, it joins two clauses that could be sentences. For example:. These two clauses could be separate sentences: "Mary drives a Mercedes. Joanne drives a Chevrolet. Usually, you can tell from the context what the relationship is. This is useful in many situations, such as when writing cautiously, ironically, or humorously. One more very common use of the semi-colon is to join two clauses using a transition such as however , therefore , or on the other hand.
Here are some examples:. When you are sure that you understand the lesson, you can continue with the exercise. There are three types of muscle in the body: cardiac, smooth, and skeletal. The colon in this sentence signals that you are about to learn the names of the three types of muscles the sentence already mentioned. We might silently read the sentence this way.
There are three types of muscle in the body and they are : cardiac, smooth, and skeletal. Colons are often used with lists, as in the example above. They can also be used to signal further clarification. We have two options here: stay and fight, or run like the wind. We have two options here and they are as follows : stay and fight, or run like the wind. A colon can be used to separate two independent clauses when a the second clause is directly related to the first clause not just vaguely related and b when the emphasis is on the second clause.
While you can also use a semicolon or a period between two independent-yet-related clauses, the colon is a little softer than the period, but a little harder than the semicolon.
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