It’s 3:15 a.m. You wake up in a cold sweat. You had the nightmare again: punctuation marks had been chasing you through the halls of your elementary school. You laugh at how silly the dream seems now that you’re awake. You get up to grab a glass of water, but you don’t notice the colon hiding in the shadows under your bed. There’s nothing you could do to protect yourself even if you did.
Okay, maybe colons aren’t that scary, but the fact is most students are intimidated by colons because they don’t know how to use them.
How to Use a Colon
Good news! There’s only one use for a colon you need to remember for the test: colons are used after complete sentences to introduce a word, list, phrase, or clause somehow connected to the rest of the sentence.
On questions about punctuation, you should be looking for the overall sentence structure anyway, so if you find there’s a complete sentence before the punctuation, you can use a colon to introduce whatever comes next.
Let’s look at a sample question:
My first step in approaching this question – after determining that it’s a punctuation question – is to determine the sentence structure. In this case, I’m looking at what’s happening before and after the colon.
What’s going on before the colon? “After I left the store to go home, I discovered I had forgotten everything.” That’s a complete sentence. Notice how the sentence sets up the expectation of some explanation of “everything.”
What’s going on after the colon? “The milk, the eggs, and the bread” is a list of everything I forgot at the store.
Without even looking at the other answer choices, I can see that the colon is used correctly; therefore, the answer must be F. No Change.
Feel the Power
The only reason you should be afraid of colons is because they are so powerful. With other punctuation marks, you have to worry about what comes before and after them. Colons can connect anything you want to a complete sentence—as long as the complete sentence comes first.
Once you feel more confident with colons, you can even use them in your own writing. After all, the best way to conquer our fears is to face them.
Want to learn about semicolons?
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