Tag Archives: Punctuation

Today I am going to talk about colons. Before we look at the stylistic advantages of using colons, let’s look at the rules of colon use. In fact, let’s look at the only rule of colon use: a colon should appear after a complete sentence. In other words, don’t put a colon in the middle of a sentence:

This paper will consider: strategy, structure, personnel, and process.

The writer has presumably used a colon here because what follows is a list. But the decision about colon use actually needs to be made on the basis of what precedes the colon. This example is no different, logically, than the following: ‘I went to the store to buy: milk and eggs.’ In both cases, the colon is redundant because the items being listed are part of the sentence. Now consider a slight modification:

This paper will consider four areas of inquiry: strategy, structure, personnel, and process.

In this case, we have a complete sentence before the colon. If we want to go on to say what those four areas of inquiry are, we need to provide that information separately. A colon allows us to indicate that what follows will provide the information necessary to complete the thought found in the first sentence. Note that what follows a colon need not be a full sentence; single words, phrases, and full sentences can all appear after a colon.

With one simple rule—a colon should appear after a complete sentence—we are ready to see the stylistic advantages of the colon. Here are the three possible versions of our example:

This paper will consider: strategy, structure, personnel, and process.

This paper will consider four areas of inquiry: strategy, structure, personnel, and process.

This paper will consider strategy, structure, personnel, and process.

The final version seems to me to be the best. The first version, as we have seen, is incorrect, and the second version, while perfectly acceptable, seems a bit ponderous. In a sentence this simple, there is no need for a full sentence to introduce a list. (I might change my assessment of the second version if these ‘four areas of inquiry’ had ongoing structural significance for the paper; in that case, identifying them as such might be valuable.) If you find yourself putting a redundant colon in the midst of a simple list, you can just take it out and carry on. If, however, you find such a colon in a more complex sentence, it may be trying to tell you something. Consider this example:

This paper will consider: the nature of strategy in the high-tech industry in the period starting in 1983, the structure, both financial and organizational, of CHX Corporation, the management of personnel in this company at this time, and the process whereby the company came to occupy such a dominant market position.

In this case, the colon—while still technically redundant—is definitely there for a reason. The author used a colon in response to an inkling that the reader would need to know that a list is coming. So, in this case, try keeping the colon and adding the requisite words to create a full sentence before that colon.

This paper will consider four areas of inquiry: the nature of strategy in the high-tech industry in the period starting in 1983; the structure, both financial and organizational, of CHX Corporation; the management of personnel in this company at this time; and the process whereby the company came to occupy such a dominant market position.

(You will see that I have also added semicolons in the place of commas between the list items; I have done so because one of the list items had internal commas, which will potentially inhibit the readers’ ability to understand the list. I will address this issue in more detail in a future post on writing effective lists.)

I will end by commenting on the way that colons can be an efficient and elegant way to convey the relationship that exists between parts of your writing. Here is a sentence that I used at the outset of this post:

 In fact, let’s look at the only rule of colon use: a colon should appear after a complete sentence.

Here a colon allows us to fulfill the promise of the first sentence without belabouring the point. We don’t have to say ‘In fact, let’s look at the only rule of colon use, which is that a colon should appear only after a complete sentence.’ The version with the colon is, in my view, preferable since it uses fewer words and avoids a commonplace pattern of subordination.

If you have questions about colons or thoughts about the role they play in academic writing, please leave them in the comments below.

Today’s topic is dashes: when to use them and when not to use them. At the risk of boring you—although you are reading a post about dashes so you really have only yourself to blame—I am going to start with the distinction between hyphens and dashes. A hyphen joins two words into a unit (e.g., ‘on-site manager’ or ‘lotus-eater’) or indicates a word break at the end of a line of text. A short dash (often called an en-dash because it is the width of the letter ‘n’) separates items such as dates or page numbers (e.g., 1711–1776 or pp. 106–7). A long dash (often called an em-dash because it is the width of a letter ‘m’) is what we will be talking about below. A hyphen is produced by a simple keystroke on your keyboard; dashes are symbols that can be inserted into a document in a variety of ways. For more on hyphens and dashes, you can consult the online Chicago Manual of Style.

Just in case anyone is still reading, I am now going to talk about using dashes in your writing. First, we will look at single dashes, which I will argue are insufficiently formal for academic writing, although some would disagree. Here is an example:

Recombinant DNA technology has left an indelible mark on the basic ingredient of human survival—food production.

This dash could be replaced by either a comma or a colon. I would suggest a colon because a colon signals unambiguously that what follows will complement or complete what precedes it. A comma would work, but since commas play so many roles in our writing, I generally choose a colon over a comma when they go head-to-head. Here is another example:

The range of Hume’s writings help us to understand his reservations about a revolutionary approach—such an approach would be unlikely for a thinker so immersed in historical considerations.

In this case, you could replace the dash with either a semicolon or a period. Generally, a semicolon will work best since it will provide the closeness that the author was trying to convey with the dash.

I am only arguing against the single dash in academic writing—it is absolutely fine in a more casual context like, say, a blog post. My reason for this advice is that the dash can play the role of a comma, colon, or period without doing anything unique. Nothing special is added and something may be lost. You may lose clarity, and you will certainly lose formality. I am being, of course, overly opinionated; if you wish to defend the use of single dashes in formal writing, I hope you’ll do so in the comments below. One possible line of defence is certainly the drama of the single dash; since it breaks up a sentence in an unconventional manner, it does draw real attention to what follows it. Now let’s turn to the use of double dashes.

Double dashes are used instead of commas (or parentheses) to interrupt a sentence. The phrase separated by dashes must be grammatically inessential, by which I simply mean that the sentence will still work without that phrase. Here is an example:

The issues that confront students entering late-stream French immersion programs—most importantly, their lack of familiarity with instructional vocabularies—are a pressing concern for school administrators.

It is often said that we use dashes to signal that something crucial is being added to a sentence and use parentheses to signal that the interruption is relatively unimportant (e.g., to give dates or citations or examples). In this schema, commas fall somewhere in the middle. There is some truth to this division, but I find the next three principles more helpful in deciding whether to use double dashes:

1. Most importantly, double dashes can be used to add an element to a sentence that already has its share of commas.

2. Double dashes are very common in some fields (most humanities fields, for instance) and rare in others (in many scientific fields, for instance). If they are rare in your field, it is unlikely that you would want to use them.

3. Regardless of field, double dashes are a stylistic variant and should be used sparingly; they draw attention to themselves, and the audience will grow tired of them if they are overused.

Overall, I suggest using double dashes—if they are appropriate to your field of study—in moderation and replacing single dashes with colons, commas, or even periods, if only in your formal writing.

Note: For more on dashes, see Interrupting Yourself.