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Colon
There are only two rules to learn regarding colons. Learn them now and you'll carry this useful information for the rest of your life.
1. Use a colon before a list, summary, long quotation, or final clause that explains or amplifies preceding matter.
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. Mark Twain
There are two reasons for drinking: one is, when you are thirsty, to cure it; the other, when you are not thirsty, to prevent it. Thomas Peacock
2. Use a colon following a phrase in which the words as follows or the following are either expressed or implied.
There are at least three reasons to quit smoking: your heart, your lungs, and your family’s heart and lungs.
The ingredients of a diplomat's life have been identified as follows: protocol, alcohol, and Geritol.
Many hazards await the unwary consumer: deceptive packaging, misleading labels, and shoddy workmanship.
Warning: Do not use a colon when the items of a list come immediately after a verb or preposition:
Wrong:
The job requirements are: typing, shorthand, and bookkeeping.
Correct:
The job requirements are typing, shorthand, and bookkeeping.
Still not sure about colon usage? Read on:
You don’t need to remember six or seven rules to understand how a colon works. In prose, a colon really does only one thing: it introduces. It can introduce just about anything: a word, a phrase, a sentence, a quotation, or a list. You’ll notice that we’ve used colons in the two preceding sentences to introduce a sentence, in the first case, and a list, in the second case. This is how simple the colon is. Let’s look at some other examples:
Joe has only one thing on his mind: profit.
Joe has only one thing on his mind: his stock portfolio.
Joe has only one thing on his mind: he wants to get rich.
Joe has three things on his mind: stocks, bonds, and certificates of deposit.
We have used a colon in these four sentences to introduce various kinds of things: a word, a phrase, a sentence, and a list. You can use a colon in your prose in any place where you must directly introduce something. A colon gives special emphasis to whatever you’re introducing because readers must first come to a stop, and so they pay more attention to it. For example, let’s say you are writing a letter describing a product, and you want to emphasize above all that this product, the Jacobsen lawn mower, is reliable. You could very well write:
The Jacobsen lawn mower beats its competitors especially in the key area of reliability.
While this sentence gets the point across, it doesn’t place much emphasis on reliability. A sentence using a colon is much more emphatic:
The Jacobsen lawn mower beats its competitors especially in one key area: reliability.
Notice that the second example places clear emphasis on the point that the writer is trying to communicate to his or her reader: that the Jacobsen lawn mower is above all reliable. The writer of this sentence has used the colon effectively.
Perhaps the most common way to use a colon is to introduce a list of items, as in this sentence:
This report reviews five main criteria to determine whether to purchase the IBM PC: hardware, software, maintenance agreements, service, and customer support.
If you aren’t sure whether you need a colon in a particular sentence, here is a handy test: read the sentence, and when you reach the colon, substitute the word namely; if the sentence reads through smoothly, then there’s a good chance that you do need a colon. For example, you can read any of the example sentences above with the word namely in the place of the colon:
Joe has only one thing on his mind [namely] profit.
Joe has only one thing on his mind [namely] his stock portfolio.
Joe has only one thing on his mind [namely] he wants to get rich.
Joe has three things on his mind [namely] stocks, bonds, and certificates of deposit.
This test may not work 100 percent of the time, but it is a fairly reliable indicator of whether you need a colon.
One word of caution: do not place the colon after the verb in a sentence, even when you are introducing something, because the verb itself introduces and the colon would be redundant. For example, you would not write:
My three favorite friends are: Nastasia, Carmella, and Jacy.
The colon is not necessary in the sentence above because the verb does the work of introducing the three friends. You can check this sentence by using the test we just mentioned. It would seem awkward to read this sentence, “My three favorite friends are, namely, Nastasia, Carmella, and Jacy. ”The fact that the sentence is awkward when you read it with namely is an indication that the colon is unnecessary. Remember, the colon shows emphasis and, therefore, you want the reader to stop at the colon before preceding on to whatever it is you are introducing.