{"id":1339,"date":"2013-02-04T17:27:11","date_gmt":"2013-02-04T17:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/?p=1339"},"modified":"2013-02-04T17:27:11","modified_gmt":"2013-02-04T17:27:11","slug":"punctuation-everyday-use-of-the-colon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/punctuation-everyday-use-of-the-colon\/","title":{"rendered":"Punctuation:  Everyday use of the Colon"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1>When you tutor English, punctuation is a constant concern.\u00a0 Appropriate use of the colon can add a nice touch to a writing assignment.<\/h1>\n<p>My wife has been questioning my use of colons for months now:\u00a0 &#8220;Don&#8217;t you need to follow a colon with a capital letter?&#8221; she asks.<\/p>\n<p>Well, according to the<em> McGraw-Hill Handbook of English <\/em>(1986), you don&#8217;t.\u00a0 A sentence like the following is perfectly acceptable:<\/p>\n<p>My one goal this year is simple:\u00a0 to fit into my size-32 jeans.<\/p>\n<p>The first writer I ever noticed using colons in\u00a0the middle of sentences was Charles Dickens.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t remember his following them with capital letters.<\/p>\n<p>The colon&#8217;s purpose is to call the writer&#8217;s attention to what follows.\u00a0 You needn&#8217;t ever use a colon in the middle of a sentence, of course.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Some writers don&#8217;t write in a style that suggests such use of colons.\u00a0 However, it helps to &#8220;change things up&#8221;\u00a0in a longer piece of writing.<\/p>\n<p>Good luck, if you decide to experiment:)<\/p>\n<p>Jack of <a href=\"..\/\">Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane,<\/a> Campbell River, BC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When you tutor English, punctuation is a constant concern.\u00a0 Appropriate use of the colon can add a nice touch to a writing assignment. My wife has been questioning my use of colons for months now:\u00a0 &#8220;Don&#8217;t you need to follow &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/punctuation-everyday-use-of-the-colon\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Punctuation:  Everyday use of the Colon<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1339"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1339\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1355,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1339\/revisions\/1355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oracletutoring.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}