Making a Point

by David Crystal

  Nor I my Lord: in faith.

  I humbly thanke you: well, well, well.

  Fye upon’t: Foh.

  We can also sense an uncertainty over the use of this new mark, especially in relation to other punctuation marks:

  (As I perchance heereafter shall thinke meet

  To put an Anticke disposition on :)

  This isn’t an ancient example of an emoticon. It shows a typesetter unsure whether a closing parenthesis is sufficient to signal the required pause.

  The other point to note about early use of the colon is that there was no limit to the number that might appear in a single sentence. So we find Polonius announcing the impending arrival of the Players to Hamlet in this way:

  The best Actors in the world, either for Tragedie, Comedie, Historie, Pastorall: Pastoricall-Comicall-Historicall-Pastorall: Tragicall-Historicall: Tragicall-Comicall-Historicall-Pastorall: Scene indivible, or Poem unlimited.

  This is very different from present-day use, as we’ll see.

  As soon as the grammarians took control of punctuation, the situation changed. They attempted to define rules for the use of the colon, but the advice was vague. Here’s Lindley Murray:

  The Colon is used to divide a sentence into two or more parts, less connected than those which are separated by a semicolon; but not so independent as separate distinct sentences.

  The problem is clear: how are we to define the degree of connection between colon and semicolon? Usage throughout the nineteenth century shows that people had no idea how to decide, as we find many examples of writing where the marks are used inconsistently and interchangeably. Here’s a poetic example, which I choose because it presents the variation very clearly. It’s a transcription of a manuscript of the last poem written by Edgar Allan Poe: ‘Annabel Lee’ (1849). This is the beginning of the first stanza:

  It was many and many a year ago,

  In a kingdom by the sea,

  That a maiden lived whom you may know

  By the name of Annabel Lee;--

  And this maiden she lived …

  And here are the middle lines of the last:

  And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes

  Of the beautiful Annabel Lee:--

  And so, all the night-tide …

  The metre and the surrounding grammatical context are the same, yet there is a punctuation shift. Now we could of course argue until daybreak about whether there is something significant in this; but any subtle interpretation would be well beyond the perception of the average reader, who is left with the impression that the choice between the colon and semicolon is perhaps phonetic, perhaps grammatical, perhaps semantic – or simply a matter of taste. Similarly, the use of an associated dash, seen in this extract, was widespread in earlier centuries, especially in British English, but practice varied enormously. It’s largely disappeared from print nowadays, though it remains popular in informal handwriting. It’s even been given a name – the colash – part of a small family of old usages that includes the commash (,-) and the semicolash (;-).

  During the nineteenth century, usage preferences began to accumulate, so much so that pundits at the beginning of the twentieth century felt able to make rules that they felt would work. Henry Fowler summed it up in typically daring metaphors:

  the time when it was a second member of the hierarchy, full stop, colon, semicolon, comma, is past … [it] has acquired a special function, that of delivering the goods that have been invoiced in the preceding words; it is a substitute for such verbal harbingers as viz, scil., that is to say, i.e., &c.

  He was right about the first point. And he was almost right about the second. The primary function of the colon is indeed to ‘deliver the goods’. But this isn’t its only function.

  Let’s explore ‘delivering the goods’ a bit further. The metaphor hides various nuances.

  What comes after the colon can be an explication of what comes before. We may replace it by as follows. The issue can be briefly summarized: either we go or we don’t.

  The second part is essential to the discourse. If the sentence were to stop at summarized we would feel semantically short-changed. This makes it an ideal introducer for examples (as in this book).

  What comes after the colon can be a rephrasing of what comes before. We may replace it by namely. Everyone accepted John’s point: we had no choice but to go.

  Here the second part is less central to the discourse. If the sentence were to stop at ‘point’, it would still make sense. What follows the colon is more a reminder or summary of what has already been said.

  What comes after the colon is a rhetorical contrast with what comes before. We may replace it by some such phrase as in contrast. The difficult is done at once: the impossible takes a little longer.

  It is an antithesis, and it displays an interesting semantic asymmetry. The first part can do without the second; but the second can’t do without the first.

  What these examples have in common is the expression of a very specific semantic relationship. This is what differentiates the colon from the period and the semicolon, which are both much more general in the meaning they convey. Consider the following three options:

  (a) I looked around the room. Mike was winking. Jane was smiling.

  (b) I looked around the room. Mike was winking; Jane was smiling.

  (c) I looked around the room. Mike was winking: Jane was smiling.

  The first is a simple narrative: one thing happened and then another. The second asserts a semantic association between Mike and Jane, which the previous context would have made clear: as illustrated in the previous chapter, Mike and Jane are part of the same story, connected in some way. The third does something different: the colon suggests a significant link between the two events. Telling a bit more of the story will help to make these distinctions clearer:

  (a) I looked around the room. Mike was winking. Jane was smiling. Graham was grinning widely. Everyone could see what had happened …

  (b) I looked around the room. Mike was winking; Jane was smiling. Graham, their next-door neighbour, was ignoring them, as he always did at parties. …

  (c) I looked around the room. Mike was winking: Jane was smiling. It was great to see that my plan to bring them together had worked.

  Jane was smiling because Mike was winking. It’s a subtle point, but it’s the sort of thing that sophisticated writers do.

  The positions of the colon and the semicolon in the punctuation hierarchy have thus shifted over the centuries. In a pronunciation-dominated era, the colon outranked the semicolon. Now both marks function at the same level: one level down from the sentence-ending period, and one level up from the phrase-dividing comma. Some analysts rank the semicolon as somewhat higher, because it has a much wider set of functions:

  The semicolon has a broader semantic reach. The range of meanings conveyed by the semicolon, as we saw in the previous chapter, is wide and indeterminate. By contrast, the range of meanings expressed by the colon is limited and much easier to define.

  The grammatical function of the semicolon is to join sentences (or elements of sentences) in a balanced way. By contrast, balance is not an issue when using the colon. What follows the colon is often not a sentence at all, but a phrase, an individual word, or a list of items: John got what he wanted for his birthday: a new pen.

  There was only one thing left to do: cry.

  Continue the sequence: 5, 10, 15, 20 …

  We often encounter more than one semicolon in a single sentence; but it’s rare to see more than one colon. Style guides advise writers not to use a sequence of colons in a single sentence. They usually just say it is ‘bad style’; but the underlying reason is semantic. Explications within explications get confusing: Everyone accepted John’s point: there were three options available to those who wanted to attend the conference: to drive, take the train, or catch one of the frequent buses: either the 3.30 from Oxford or the 4.10 from Reading.

  We keep having to
change perspectives as we read this sentence. The first explication (there were three …) makes us refer back to John’s point. The second (to drive …) makes us refer back to three options. The third (either …) makes us refer back to frequent buses. We are trying to read in a forwards direction, but the colons keep forcing us to make retrospective semantic connections. This isn’t a problem if we have to do it just once in a sentence; but it becomes a strain when we have to do it repeatedly.

  Perhaps because the colon has so few meanings, it has developed a wide range of specialized uses marking separation – far more than the period and semicolon. It has an advantage over the period in being more visible, so we tend to see it more often when we need to separate numerals, as in times (3:40 pm), dates (1:3:14), and racing results in hours, minutes, and seconds (2:14:56), especially online and on electronic clock faces. The period could also perform this role, but as this mark is already used for specific mathematical functions (such as a decimal) there’s a reluctance to extend it. We thus see a race result involving tenths of a second written with both symbols: 9:3.4 (9 minutes 3.4 seconds).

  Other specialized uses are found in computer programs and mathematical settings. For example, it identifies a ratio in mathematics (3:4), and this has many applications, such as in map scales (1:5000). We see it on our computer screens as part of a drive letter (such as C:) or as a component delimiter in web addresses (http:// …). In print, it’s widely used to separate main titles from subtitles, though typography often replaces this function on book jackets and in chapter headings, as we saw on p. 113. It’s also standard practice to use a colon before speeches in play scripts (as on p. 140) or verbatim reports (as in the Hansard example on p. 133), and it’s a regular way of introducing a quotation (as throughout this book). It can show a repeat in musical scores, a long vowel or consonant in phonetics, or a pair of eyes in an emoticon :). Idiosyncratic usage includes a double colon in some Internet game exchanges to show a parenthetical action or quotation within a narrative:

  ::curses and leaves the room::

  At the same time, there’s a great deal of house-style variation. Some publishers use it to separate place and publisher in bibliographies:

  Crystal, D. 2012. The Story of English in 100 Words. London: Profile Books.

  Some use it in indexes, separating a heading from its subheadings:

  politics: in France 4, 11; in Germany 17, 44

  Some use it to separate the numerals in section headings (3:12). Others use the period, or even the comma, for some of these functions. In bibliographies, for example, we will see such variants as:

  London. Profile Books.

  London, Profile Books.

  From a grammatical point of view, the earlier examples in this chapter have one thing in common: the element preceding the colon would, in other circumstances, be a sentence. It is, technically, an independent clause.

  Everyone accepted John’s point: we had no choice but to go.

  Everyone accepted John’s point.

  The only exceptions are when what follows a transitive verb (i.e. one where an object is required) is a quotation or direct speech. We will find people writing the following examples with the verb followed by a comma or no punctuation, but often a colon is used:

  The subtitle read: ‘The Pernickety Story of English Punctuation’.

  John asked: ‘Where are we going?’

  Here, what follows is acting as the required object: ‘The subtitle read X’, ‘John asked Y.’ It’s important to note this point of grammar, because one of the common errors in using colons is to insert one before a list in cases like this:

  The capital cities of Europe include: Paris, London, and Berlin.

  While this sort of usage is common enough informally, it’s considered bad practice in formal writing because ‘The capital cities of Europe include’ doesn’t make sense. The point is worth emphasizing, because unwanted colons seem to be on the increase, for reasons that aren’t clear. It may have something to do with the television practice in competitive shows to announce the winners with a dramatic pause before the names:

  The winners are — DRUM ROLL — Matthew and Sarah!

  If we had to write this down, a better mark – given the informal setting – would be one or more dashes.

  Related to this is the question of capitalization: should we use a capital letter after the colon? With quotations and direct speech, as we see, the answer is yes. It’s yes also if what follows the colon is a series of sentences:

  Two things would follow: First, the rivers would overflow. Second, the low-lying villages would be flooded.

  Showing that the sentences are parallel is felt to be the more important issue: both sentences relate back to Two things. Hence the following version is disturbing, as the orthography is sending us contradictory messages at the same time:

  Two things would follow: first, the rivers would overflow. Second, the low-lying villages would be flooded.

  Where just one sentence follows, the answer is less clear, because usage varies:

  Everyone accepted John’s point: We had no choice but to go.

  Everyone accepted John’s point: we had no choice but to go.

  The capitalized version is far more common in American English writing, but style guides differ. Publishers will have made their choices in their house styles. In other circumstances, the only advice is to make your choice and be consistent. Taste rules, once again. And if you don’t like any of the above, the only solution is to rephrase.

  Finally, it’s useful to note cases where the use of a colon is semantically redundant, and the only reason to use it is tradition. I’ve already mentioned cases where it’s dropped between a book-title and its subtitle, and where type size, font, colour, or layout makes the relationship between the elements clear. More commonly in everyday life we see it used after a salutation at the beginning of a formal letter.

  To whom it may concern:

  Dear Professor Smith:

  This is standard practice in American English. British English traditionally uses the comma (though American influence is spreading). However, the stylistic issue isn’t as critical as it used to be. The spacing conventions for letter-openings are sufficient to highlight any salutation, and punctuationless saluting is increasingly the norm. Most of the letters I receive these days – formal as well as informal – have neither colon nor comma. It’s another manifestation of the move towards an uncluttered appearance in modern orthography.

  Overall, the colon presents fewer problems of usage compared with other punctuation marks. In this it contrasts dramatically with the comma, which presents most of all.

  24

  Commas, the big picture

  We are nearing the bottom of our punctuation hierarchy. To recapitulate:

  a text is divided into paragraphs (Chapter 15)

  a period (and sometimes other marks) separates sentences in paragraphs (Chapters 16–21)

  a semicolon separates two or more clauses (and sometimes other units) within sentences (Chapter 22)

  a colon separates two clauses (and sometimes other units) within sentences (Chapter 23).

  That leaves us with three more levels:

  a comma may separate clauses, but also separates phrases (often single words) within clauses

  a space separates words (dealt with in Chapter 2)

  a hyphen and an apostrophe separate elements within words (Chapters 27–9).

  These all present the writer with problems of usage.

  Regardless of the approach to punctuation, the comma has always attracted particular attention. It’s the longest section in traditional accounts, and the author invariably ends by making an apology for the inadequacy of his (I’ve not come across female grammarians or printers in researching this book) treatment. Here’s William Cobbett, in Letter 14 to his son in A Grammar of the English Language (1829):

  The comma marks the shortest pause that we make in speaking: and it is evident, that, in many cases,
its use must depend upon taste.

  In many cases, yes, but not in all. And what is taste anyway? If a lot of people have the same taste, in the way they use commas, what is it that unites them? There is evidently a certain amount of variation in the way commas are used, but it isn’t infinite or totally idiosyncratic. In fact there are only a few cases where variation is possible, as we’ll see.

  Why is the section on commas the longest in any usage manual? It’s because this mark is used more often than any other. Here are the totals found in a 72,000-word corpus (reported in the reference grammar published by Randolph Quirk and his associates in 1985, A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, p. 1613):

  commas

  4,054

  periods

  3,897

  dashes

  189

  pairs of parentheses

  165

  semicolons

  163

  question marks

  89

  colons

  78

  exclamation marks

  26

  Obviously, such totals will reflect the genres included, so another survey of different material may alter the frequencies quite a bit, especially at the lower end. But the comma usually comes top. The reason is that it has a wider range of uses than any other mark. Most punctuation marks have a fairly restricted role: they separate sentences or the main parts of sentences (clauses). Commas can do this too, and additionally separate phrases and words. No other punctuation mark operates all the way down the grammatical scale. I’ll look at its use at the higher levels in this chapter, and in the next explore the way it’s used at the lower levels.