Talk:Colon (punctuation)

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[edit] Grammar Rules

My english teacher told me: always two spaces after a colon! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.242.63.93 (talk) 20:21, 2 June 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Capitalization after colons

I was taught that there is a rule for whether a colon is followed by a lower case letter or a an upper case letter in English. If the clause following the colon could stand on its own as an independent sentence, then it is capitalized. I assume that someone out there has done a study of how often this rule is followed. Also, is there a Wikipedia philosophy about punctuation rules? Are we trying to be normative?

Me too: I thought the same thing. I hope it wasn't rude for me to insert a clarification request in that section. In AP style, at least, the word following the colon is capitalized when the colon is followed by an independent clause. The entry implies this is the case in German, but not in other European languages. Rangergordon (talk) 10:38, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Medical

There will need to be a redirect to the medical definition of the colon (anatomy) at some point or the user will need to be sent to a disambiguation page first.

Colon is another word for butt.

[edit] Europe

i removed the following text by user:Npc: "This may be considered somewhat insulting or harsh in some European cultures, where the comma is preferred. Use of colon may denote authority or commanding power to some people in Europe." i thought it was very ugly writting, and i tried to rephrase it. (it also ignored the chance of a world outside of the US and europe) The bellman 00:02, 2004 Oct 28 (UTC)

The paragraph only mentioned Europe because only in Europe is a comma preferred. Also, what is a "chance of a world outside of the US and [E]urope" supposed to mean?

[edit] Capitalization after colons

I'm not sure about how we should capitalize letters after colons in sentences such as, "Here's what to do if you want to get a lift from a Vogon: forget it." Some here would capitalize "forget", because it begins a complete thought: an answer to the unasked question, "What do I do if I want to get a lift from a Vogon?" This seems more common in British usage and I hadn't encountered it before until recently. Indeed, every time I saw this usage on Wikipedia, I thought it erroneous and "corrected" it. Perhaps we should note this confusion here (or maybe at Capitalization), and perhaps we should add it to the Manual of Style as well... - furrykef (Talk at me) 05:34, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Captialization is optional. Lowercase is always correct. Jsmethers 08:20, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm mildly surprised at the original comment in this section. I'm British, and have always thought capitalisation after colons to be an American thing! It's certainly very uncommon here now, even if that was not the case in the past, and I'd never think of capitalising except for some special purpose. Loganberry (Talk) 01:10, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm not convinced it's so uncommon. Two or three of the examples on the page of examples we link to have capitals after the colon which don't seem to fit the rule given here (i.e. quotes or words which would normally be capitalised), for example.--Oolong 06:49, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Rewrite

This article was a mess. I did a massive rewrite and grouped most of the uses (except Math, etc.) under "Uses". Some of the information appeared wrong and I removed it. It is possible it is used in the UK that way, if so please replace it, but also make sure and separate US and UK uses of colons. In the US, a colon is never used to separate items in a series (the US uses a semicolon). Rt66lt 23:52, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Common Errors

This section said that colons shouldn't be used after verbs, prepositions or dependent clauses. A tad confusing, given that a few lines up we're provided with the following model sentence:

The sign read: "Do not enter."

I also see nothing wrong with these:

There's someone you should talk to: John Smith. It was a road that never ended: it seemed to go on forever.

It sounds like these "rules" are taken from an outdated style guide, maybe one that still considers it an error to end a clause in a preposition. I'm taking them out for now. --Lanius 15:54, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

218.215.69.139 (talk) 04:45, 5 March 2008 (UTC)This page is a mess - I still am not a 100% sure what a colon is in punctuation terms after reading it. I am a native English speaker who has excellent announciation. I cant imagine how difficult it would be for someone who is learning English as a second language. Please compare this page to the one on semi colons, it is much better.

[edit] Example Usage

I would like to see examples added for each of the usages of the colon in the section "Usages" in the following format (I could not think of any suitable examples at the time of writing so I may leave that to someone with more experience):

  • syntactical-deductive: introduces the logical consequence, or effect, of a fact stated before

Example: A sentence demonstrating this use of the colon

80.195.186.192 11:24, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

  • I agree, it will be much better and more informative. Punctuations generally are a big problem/issue for non-English-speaking people/students; the more example the easier to grasp the concept. 82.70.40.190
  • Ditto. —DIV (128.250.204.118 02:45, 5 July 2007 (UTC))

[edit] I wanted to redirect [[:]]

But whenever I click "edit this page" I get sent back to the main page. What's up with that? Citizen Premier 06:56, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Yeah I just tried the same thing. I can't create the [[:]] page. Cuñado - Talk 02:19, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
It looks to be that the colon is a control character in the Wiki engine. For example it has a specific function in the link Wikipedia:Requested_articles.
Also note that searching on a random string — say "weuinbjvb" — results in an option to create the page (e.g. "You can create this page or [...]"). However searching for a full stop using just the symbol "." yields an error. Searching for a colon with ":" is ostensibly carried out properly, but returns no results and the option to create the page [[:]] is corrupted: in particular, it reads "You can [[:|create this page]] or [...]". I say ostensibly, because I surmise that in fact it searches for [blank]:[blank].
—DIV (128.250.204.118 10:10, 5 July 2007 (UTC))
Well, you can link to it, but it takes you to the main page : You just put a space on either side. I wonder if the developers could do anything about it. Andrew Kanode (talk) 23:52, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
And [1] tells me I have a "Bad Title". Andrew Kanode (talk) 23:54, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wiki

Uses in Wikis such as Wikipedia include:

  • {{:Spanish flu research}} will transclude (display the article like a template) the page Spanish flu research instead of Template:Spanish flu research. For content, an article is prefered over a template.
  • At the beginning of a line a colon indents. The more colons, the farther the indent.
  • Separating a namespace ("Wikipedia") and a pagename ("Three-revert rule"). For example, Wikipedia:Three-revert rule.
  • After "subst" in order to substitute a template. For example, {{subst:afd}} will "substitute" the template in, so the text remains unchanged. WAS 4.250 16:15, 22 July 2006 (UTC)


I removed the wiki section. It is very MediaWiki specific (i.e. Confluence or Twiki or what have you all use different syntaxes than this). This information would perhaps belong in a "syntax of MediaWiki" article, but not here. —Matthew0028 23:48, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Europe

In the Europe-part there were some exceptions in using a capital letter after a colon. Here German and Dutch were named like if they were the same. It said in German and Dutch there will be a capital letter after colon when it is followed by a noun. The German language capatalises all nouns, where Dutch doesn't. In the (Dutch!) link given (http://taaladvies.net/taal/advies/vraag/392/) it explains what I have now edited out of it. This page does NOT has anything to do with German rules about capitalisation after colons.


80.57.23.98 16:40, 24 May 2007 (UTC)