Grammar for Everyone - Barbara Dykes 2007
20 More punctuation - Colons
Introduction
Part II The parts of speech
Before studying more punctuation, check that students can recognise, understand and use correctly the following punctuation marks: full stop, question mark, exclamation mark, comma, inverted commas and apostrophe.
So far, the exercises have been mainly straightforward and not purposely complex, as they are designed to test the students’ learning and assess the efficacy of the instruction.
Inevitably the students will come across variations in sentence structure that test their skills and sometimes ours as well. In general, unless they are unreasonably intricate or complex - in which case we may leave them to grammarians to unravel - they can be analysed by logic. Before we embark on studying more complex but well-constructed sentences there are a few gaps to fill. So, in this section, we uncover some of the classifications that further clarify the terms we have been using and are now familiar with.
Firstly, we look at the remaining punctuation marks, understanding of which will enable students to reach a higher level of maturity in their own composition.
Colons
Definition: The word is from Greek, kolon, meaning ’a limb’ and is used to indicate that some connected information is to follow.
• The colon’s most common use is to precede a list, especially of items consisting of more than one word (note its use after ’for example’).
For example:
Here are some of the things you can do at our zoo: get close to wild animals, feed the monkeys, cuddle a koala and observe a platypus.
• The colon can provide a stop (or a short pause) between two balanced parts of a sentence, in which the second part explains or furthers the information given in the first part.
For example:
I got our tickets for the final: they had nearly sold out.
Note, too, how the use of the colon can make the narrative more dramatic than when it is expressed in an ordinary sentence.
For example:
He ran to the opening: it was blocked by a fallen rock.
Compare with:
He ran to the opening, but found it was blocked by a fallen rock.
• Colons are used to introduce quotations.
For example:
Shakespeare’s 'Julius Caesar’ opens with the words: ’Hence! Home, you idle Creatures, get you home.’
• This use of the colon would be one with which every modern child would be familiar! That which separates parts of numerals, as in time:
6:30 9:00
and in some digital time-pieces, one dot refers to a.m. and two dots to p.m.
20.1 Activities: colons
1. Students write an advertisement for the things you can do at:
a. a fun park
b. Underwater World
c. a museum
2. Students answer time questions with digital numerals.
a. When did you get up this morning?
b. What time do you start school?
c. When do you have lunch?
3. Students use colons to write these sentences in a more dramatic way. a. He got badly hurt when he fell off his skateboard.
b. We couldn’t get in because Emma had gone off with the key.
c. A green ant bit me, so I screamed.
Note: It may be more effective to change around the order of words.
4. Students find a quotation from one of their books and introduce it, mentioning the speaker. See the example from Shakespeare on the previous page.