August 12, 2011

A Colon after a Sentence inside a Sentence

Be cautious about using journalism as a model for your business writing: some excellent journalists use nonstandard English. Here’s a sentence that uses a colon in a nonstandard way.

To take an example of just one classroom convention that might be inhibiting today’s students: teachers and professors regularly ask students to write papers.

— Virginia Heffernan, “Education Needs a Digital-Age Upgrade,” nytimes.com, August 7, 2011

There’s a simple rule about a colon that follows an introductory thought: only type a colon after an introductory word group that could stand on its own as a complete sentence.

A colon is correct in both the following sentences because the reworded introductory thoughts could both become complete sentences if they were followed by periods instead of colons. The revised words are underlined.

I’ll take an example of just one classroom convention that might be inhibiting today’s students: teachers and professors regularly ask students to write papers.

Here is an example of just one classroom convention that might be inhibiting today’s students: teachers and professors regularly ask students to write papers.

•

•

Write It Well’s book Essential Grammar includes two full chapters on correct punctuation. We’ve made all the book’s exercises available as a free download here to accompany the e-book, which is now available on Amazon.com!

Do you have an important document but not enough time to untangle your sentences or double-check your punctuation? Just use Write It Well’s editing services to make sure your readers follow your ideas and respect your voice.