Sunday, November 26, 2006

Colon And Semicolon: The Usages

Today's Sunday. So I feel like being free from political topics, sipping an afternoon tea.

As I have said again and again, I'm not a non-native speaker of English. I often don't know how I should compile what I want to say in English. Especially, I wonder how I should use a colon and a semicolon properly, writing an essay. Distinguish them clearly is very important and necessary to write English and to make myself understood correctly.

A colon means:
a punctuation mark ( : ) used after a word introducing a quotation, an explanation, an example, or a series and often after the salutation of a business letter.

I will show an example: She has been to numerous countries: England, France, Spain, to name but a few. The colon used in the above sentence corresponds to the English words, “namely” and “such as”.

A semicolon says:
a mark of punctuation ( ; ) used to connect independent clauses and indicating a closer relationship between the clauses than a period does. For instance, it was six o'clock in the afternoon; the sun was low in the west. Of course, the above sentence can be expressed by two independent ones. If I want to indicate a closer linkage between the two, I use a semicolon to connect them.

I may have made following grammatical mistakes: It is only one year since he began to study French, however, he has already made remarkable progress. You found mistakes? In this case, I have to put a semicolon in front of however like that: …study French; however, he has...

See this site for details.
To sum up, a colon introduces an example whereas a semicolon a close relation.

To this blog’s viewers:
If you have any other comments related to the usages of colon and semicolon, please let me know about that.

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