From the course: Writing with Proper Punctuation
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How to use colons
- Conceptually, a colon shows that more information is coming right away. What comes next can define what came before it, illustrate the point of the part that came before it, complete what came before it, and so on. For example, Joel has two favorite cities: Seattle and New York. I can answer your question: We do have an ice cream maker. Style guides agree that you only put one space after a colon, and when you mix colons with quotation marks and parentheses, it comes after them, like this. My favorite etymology is for the word "fall": It comes from the longer phrase "fall of the leaf" because leaves fall off trees during the fall season. We were talking about the first season of the year (spring): It's when plants rise, or spring, from the ground. If the words that follow the colon aren't a complete sentence, you keep the first letter lowercase, and if the part that follows it is at least two complete sentences,…
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