Colon (punctuation)
| Punctuation marks |
|---|
| ; apostrophe ('), (’) ; brackets ((, )), ([, ]), ({, }), (〈, 〉) ; colon (:) ; comma (,) ; dash (‒), (–), (—), (―) ; ellipsis (...) ; exclamation marks (!, ÃÂá) ; full stop (.) ; hyphen (-), (‐) ; interpunct (ÃÂ÷) ; interrobang (‽) ; question marks (?, ÃÂÿ) ; quotation marks ('), (‘, ’), ('), (“,”), ; (‹, ›), (ÃÂë, ÃÂû), (‚, ‘), („, “) ; semicolon (;) ; slash (/) ; space ( ) |
A colon is a punctuation mark, with one dot above another, like this: ":".
Colons are commonly used to introduce lists, or to connect a broad idea with a specific example: two related sentences can be separated by colons instead of periods. A colon can only be used if the clause preceding the colon is independent.
| Table of contents |
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2 Mathematics 3 Linguistics 4 Computer representation 5 Other meanings |
Examples
Also use the colon...Mathematics
The colon is also used in mathematics to indicate ratio and is also the standard sign for division in most non-English-speaking countries. Unicode provides ratio U+2236 (∶) for such matermatical usage if the distinction is required.
Linguistics
A special triangular colon symbol is used in IPA to indicate a preceding long vowel. It is available in Unicode as Modifier letter triangular colon Unicode U+02D0 (ː). A regular colon is often used as a fallback when this character is not available.
Computer representation
In computer programming, the colon corresponds to Unicode and ASCII character 58, or 0x003A.