4.6 Colons and semicolons

A colon is used to direct attention to the text that follows, often in a list, quotation or explanation. The first letter of the text that follows will not be capitalised, unless it is a proper noun or the start of a direct quote.

A semicolon is used to direct the reader to connect two otherwise independent clauses. Unlike full stops and commas, these can follow closing quotation marks.

○Examples

>Take, for example, the first line of the Times of India’s editorial ‘We Eat Crow’: “Every five years, it is poll time in India.”

>“I was asked to state my ‘name and serial number’; I have no serial number.”