Classics

02. Punctuation - colons and semi-colons

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Colons and semi-colons, best thought of as lying between a comma (small pause) and a full stop (major pause), have distinct, non-interchangeable functions.

Colons have two major uses:

  1. to introduce a list (as here)
  2. to separate two parts of a sentence, the second part explaining or expanding on the first part.
Examples:

Colons should never be followed by a hyphen, and the first word that follows the colon is not capitalised in British English unless capitalised anyway, for example LED, or a proper noun.

Semi-colons have two major uses: to link two complete sentences that are closely related; and to separate items in a list if the items are long.

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