Check it: colons are incredibly useful for introducing new ideas or adding emphasis. And the way people talk on the internet could use significantly more clarity: you can ramble and ramble, and just talk about whatever, expand on your point, really beat that dead horse, and then take a short break. But using colons allows you to introduce an important new idea: they provide a clear separation between different thoughts.
Oh yeah, about the colon as intestinal organ: idk…stay away from Taco Bell unless you have some extra time
My sophomore English teacher was out for a couple of weeks after having part of his colon removed. You bet your ass the get-well card was replete with semicolons.
I’ll definitely give them a try for emphasis: emphasis.
That’s what I’m talkin’ about!
What are your thoughts on semi-colons? Not the ideal for organs, I’m sure, but for punctuation… ?
Also underused. Especially in lists. Like, if I want to go to Tokyo, Japan (again); Seoul, South Korea; (<- an Oxford semicolon??) and Bordeaux, France then semicolons are ideal rather than a bunch of commas that make it unclear.
I actually looked up how to use them and this site provides good examples.
Whoa, never heard of that. Nice.
Semicolons are pretty neat too; the primary use is joining two related independent clauses without using a conjunction. Some folks seem to enjoy using them interchangeably with an em-dash; others prefer to use em-dashes as a less formal punctuation mark to replace a colon while still adding emphasis.
Em and en dashes deserve more general appreciation too, although it seems more of a typographer thing when a hyphens or parenthesis gets the job done but I always forget to close my parenthesis… I know mac makes it easy to type but windows is cumbersome.
I’m really tired of reading laws and see how the legislator doesn’t know that colons are a thing. And I have to add those colons wherever it’s necessary so I can read and study them in an appropriate way.
This is an excellent post, thank you for blessing my feed with this discourse- I also really like using dashes!
Semicolons, dashes, commas, and colons are all great for breaking up and organizing words without implying to total pause that a period would. I find them perhaps especially useful since I write like I speak, making conveying cadence or pauses to break up run-on sentences particularly important for clarity
Yes! All those underused symbols are useful when you just get a train-of- thought going.
