I always had an issue with collens, semi-collens, and comas. I can't even spell them! Please help me and give me the rules for each of them. Don't worry about length, I'm not scared of reading.
"After twelve years of therapy my psychiatrist said something that brought tears to my eyes. He said, 'No hablo ingles.'"
List- Pretty obvious. Intro- Introducing something in a sentence or adding something at the end. Interupter- They act like brackets. Anything that is extra info in the sentence (such as "placing his hand on the large metal circle of the handle"). You put commas at the beginning and the end of that. You should be able to delete the stuff between the interupter commas and still have the sentence made sense.
There's technically a fourth type, but you'll only find it in prose- Put commas wherever you'd put a pause in speaking/reading aloud.
Semi-colons ( ; ):
Are put in place of a period to link two sentences together. If you cannot put a period, you cannot put a semi-colon. You do not capitalize after one though.
Colon:
Used to introduce something, usually a list.
Example: She was faced with everything she feared: dread, hatred and fear.
In fact, the colon after "example" is another example of when to use colons!
Hope I helped!
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo
Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
"The semi-colon is a gift to any writer." - Dianne Doubtfire.
The semi-colon, in the words of the OED, indicates "a discontinuity of grammatical construction greater than a comma but less than a full stop [period]." The semi-colon splits up a sentence into two clauses; the second clause will often expand on the first. (See what I did there?)
He knew he would be late; how could he be earlier next time?
The colon is used to indicate either a list or an explanation or example of something.
Three science subjects you can take are: biology, chemistry and physics. He screamed: he had seen the ghost.
"Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself." William Faulkner.
Do you do poetry? Check out Poetry Inspiration over in Groups!
I have just one more thing to add! I love semi-colons~
^_^ Semi-colons are also used if you have a list with items that contain commas, like if you were making a list of cities and the states after them as well.
I've visited Harrisburg, PA; Louisville, KY; Birmingham, AL and Savannah, GA.
That keeps the commas from getting confused in the list! ^_^
Edit: OH, and also, you're supposed to have a full sentence before using a colon, generally. For example, if you wrote "He liked many foods. For example, these: ham, eggs, cheese", I don't think that would be technically okay. Instead you'd have to write "He liked many foods: ham, eggs, cheese". Something like that. ^_^
