Talk:Colon (punctuation)

message: 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)
thread_title: Grammar Rules

message: Double colons are used to set off and close character actions in text based RPGs and other text only forums.  Not shown here, but I think it's common enough to be included in the article. 76.94.110.1 (talk) 14:23, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Can you locate a third party wp:reliable source that describes it? It is not enough to say "I observe this to be so, therefore it can be included" because of our WP:No original research policy and lack of sufficient evidence that it is a general practice in widespread use, or just a few examples. I also wonder if it doesn't qualify as wp:trivia. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:12, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title: Use in text based RPGs

message: 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 for 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)
thread_title:  Capitalization after colons 

message: 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)
replies: text: Captialization is optional. Lowercase is always correct. Jsmethers 08:20, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Capitalization after colons 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Rewrite 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Common Errors 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Example Usage 

message: Uses in Wikis such as Wikipedia include:
* 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,  will "substitute" the template in, so the text remains unchanged. WAS 4.250 16:15, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Wiki

message: 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)
thread_title:  Europe 

message: I thought I understood how to use colons, but, when trying to add some examples to illustrate some of the cryptic terminology, I couldn't figure out the difference between "syntactical-deductive" and "appositive".
Could an expert take a look at the example sentences in the article, and make sure they clearly illustrate the difference between these two uses? Thanks!  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.134.10.80 (talk) 02:13, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Examples 

message: Can we have a section on :3 24.129.233.22 (talk) 03:14, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: ":3" meaning what? In what context? 86.161.42.75 (talk) 23:40, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  :3 is an emoticon. Just like :), :D, :(, et cetera. If you look at it, the "3" resembles a cat mouth or hamster mouth. Though it doesn't mean animal, it can be used to express affections, etc.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.129.235.74 (talk) 01:48, 21 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The use of colons in emoticons is mentioned, along with a few examples, in the "Internet usage" section, along with a link to the Emoticon article. I think the coverage here is adequate. The full list, and their meanings, is best left to the List of emoticons article.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.152.243.219 (talk) 05:09, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  :3 

message: The section about the use of capitals with a colon, to which I have just added a cleanup tag, has several problems:
*It makes a blanket statement about "English", then statements about certain varieties of English that contradict the blanket statement. 
*The flow does not make it clear which of the mentioned style conventions the examples follow.
*The examples in any case mostly illustrate the obvious cases and ignore the potentially problematic ones. 
*The Chicago MOS link points to an irrelevant page; a better link seems to be http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/CMS_FAQ/CapitalizationTitles/CapitalizationTitles40.html
I could try to fix this but I'm not an expert and I'd prefer someone else to do it. 86.161.42.75 (talk) 23:39, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use of capitals with colons 

message: Many word processing software programs of today place more importance on bit-and-byte reduction instead of accurate punctuation.  Regardless of a software's punctuaton-check features, the colon and the period should have two spaces after them.  That is, if a given writer wishes to follow traditional American punctuation rules.  Granted, both punctuation and grammar have become, in our modern times, more a matter of opinon than rules for communication.  Such a state is supported by the subjective NPOV criteria.  "Subjective NPOV" being a redundant and conflicting phrase in itself. ("subjective NPOV" being redundant; "N" before "POV" being conflicting, since one cannot have a "neutral" point-of-view). [User Tesser501:Tesser501] 27 February 2009 (UTC)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tesseract501 (talk • contribs)  
:Two Spaces after Colon (and Period) is completely and utterly wrong:
:* Using two spaces was a typewriter substitution for long spaces. This substitution was widely used in english speaking countries in former times. It was debateable even then and under that special circumstances.
:* The two-spaces-rule was never correct grammar, it was just a way to make one space appear long in places were typesetting would make that one space long for better reading.
:* Long spaces are correct only between complete sentences, not after every colon.
:* If you want to have a long space these days, you should use a proper long space, not an ugly and problem-riddled substitute.
:* Typesetting software generally automatically elongate spaces. You have to inhibit that where the automatic gets it wrong.
:-- Tomdo08 (talk) 11:12, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Two Spaces after Colon (and Period) 

message: Under usage of the colon is listed: "separation of clauses in a periodic sentence".
I would like to challenge that. Please give a solid reference. -- Tomdo08 (talk) 11:21, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Usage of the colon: separation of clauses in a periodic sentence 

message: Different colons? There is the fullwidth colon vs. ratio. Speling12345 (talk) 10:32, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comment 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I didn't want to make a straight up change in case this can be confirmed elsewhere as this seems very subjective but I'm pretty sure in the UK from personal experience using a colon for 149:0 would be about as common as 149-0. I'd imagine it's at least a little common in a lot of places. Like how officially countries have given date formats in terms of the number separators but I actually know more people who use a different system than who use the official system here. Just seems like a big assumption that it's only a German thing. 82.44.32.7 (talk) 14:22, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is the colon really only used for scores in Germany? 

message: This should be noted here. Almost every popular book on history or sociology or economics has a title in the form of "Shuffling off this mortal coil: How early settlers developed camping into an art form" or suchlike. The first bit is usually a quote from something or a literary allusion while the second bit explains what the book is about. For some reason these authors don't feel that there's anything hilarious about it. 80.89.78.148 (talk) 01:40, 20 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  The many many books with titles in the form of "Poetic quote COLON Explanatory sentence"