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The colon ("''':'''") is a Punctuation mark, consisting of two equally sized dots centered on the same vertical line. PUNCTUATION Usage As with many other punctuation marks, the usage of colon varies among languages and, for a given language, among historical periods. As a rule, however, a colon informs the reader that what follows proves, clarifies, explains, or simply enumerates elements of what is referred to before.
This last was once a common means of indicating an unmarked quotation on the same line (from the Fowlers' grammar book, ''The King's English'') :Benjamin Franklin proclaimed the virtue of frugality: A penny saved is a penny earned. A colon may also be used for the following:
A Hypernym of a word :) :The Qur'an , Sura 5:18 :The concert finished at 23:45 :This File was last modified today at 11:15:05 In English, a colon may be followed either by a follows, a capital is used; otherwise a lower case letter is used. Conventions and non-English languages In European languages the colon is usually followed by a lowercase letter (again, unless the uppercase is due to other reasons, such as a proper noun). However, usage differs from this in German, where an uppercase letter must not be used only if the sentence ''before the colon'' could not stand alone without the sentence following (elsewise one may judge freely according to the relative independency of the two assertions), and in Dutch, where an uppercase letter must be used if the colon is followed by a quotation or an enumeration of complete sentences, although in all other cases a lowercase letter should be used.http://taaladvies.net/taal/advies/vraag/392/ No space is put before a colon, except in French .'' Lexique Des Règles Typographiques En Usage à L'Imprimerie Nationale '', ISBN 2-7433-0482-0 Other uses In case of the English loan "show". HISTORY The colon was established in the English language well before 1700.Truss, Lynne. ''Eats, Shoots & Leaves'', 2003. p. 112. ISBN 1-592-40087-6. DIACRITICAL USAGE A special triangular colon symbol is used in IPA to indicate that the preceding sound is Long . Its form is that of two triangles, each a bit larger than a point of a standard colon, pointing toward each other. It is available in Unicode as modifier letter triangular colon, Unicode U+02D0 (). A regular colon is often used as a fallback when this character is not available, and in the practical orthography of some languages (particularly in Mexico) which have a phonemic long/short distinction in vowels. MATHEMATICS The colon is also used in Mathematics , Cartography , Model Building and other fields to denote a Ratio or a Scale , as in 3:1 (pronounced "three to one"). Unicode provides a distinct ratio character, Unicode U+2236 () for mathematical usage. In Logic and, correspondingly, when describing the characterizing property of a Set , it is used as an alternative to a Vertical Bar , to mean "such that". Example: (''S'' is the set of (all and only) ''x'' in such that ''x'' is greater than 1 and smaller than 3) In many non-Anglophone countries the colon is used as a division sign: "''a'' divided by ''b''" is written as ''a'' : ''b''. The combination with an equal sign, , is used for Definition s. COMPUTING In Computing , the colon Character is represented by ASCII code 58, and is located at Unicode Code-point U+003A. The full-width (double-byte) equivalent, ：, is located at Unicode code point U+FF1A. The colon is quite often used as a special Control Character in many operating systems commands, URL s, Computer Programming Languages , and in the Path Representation of several File System s. It is often used as a single post-fix Delimiter , signifying a token keyword had immediately preceded it or the transition from one mode of character string interpretation to another related mode. Some applications, such as the widely used MediaWiki , utilize the colon as both a pre-fix and post-fix delimiter. For a double colon see Paamayim Nekudotayim . INTERNET USAGE On the Internet (online chats, email, message boards, etc.) a colon, or multiple colons, is sometimes used to denote an action or emote. In this use it has the inverse function of quotation marks; denoting actions where unmarked text is assumed to be dialog. For example: :Tom: Pluto is so small, it should not be considered a planet. It is tiny! :Mark: Oh really? ::Drops Pluto on Tom's head:: Still think it's small now? Colons may also be used for sounds. :Click: Compare to the use of the Asterisk . It also has the widespread usage of representing two vertically aligned eyes in a Emoticon , such as :), :(, :P, :D, etc. REFERENCES EXTERNAL LINKS |
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