Airs and Graces
1. Colons can represent “Yes!” or “Ah!”
Tom has only one rule in his life: never eat anything bigger than your head.
(Tom has only one rule in his life – yes! never eat anything bigger than your head.)
I loved Opal fruits as child: no one else did.
(I loved Opal fruits as child – ah! but no one else did.)
I find fault with three things in this story of yours, Jenkins: the beginning, the middle and the end.
2. Colons for the introductory roles.
In later life, Kerry-Anne found there were three qualities she disliked in other people: Britishness; superior airs; and feigned lack of interest in her dusting of freckles.
3. Colons set off book and film sub-titles from the main titles:
Gandhi II: The Mahatma Strikes Back
4. We can put a semicolon between two relates sentences where there is no conjunction such as “and” or “but”, and where a comma would be ungrammatical:
I remember him when he couldn’t write his own name on a gate; now he’s a prime minister.
I loved Opal Fruits; they are now called Starburst, of course.
It was the baying of an enormous hound; it came from over there.
5. A special policeman: semicolon.
Fares were offered to Corfu, the Greek island,
->
Fares were offered to Corfu, the Greek island;
Cutting a Dash
() – bracket in the Bratian, parenthesis in the
He was(I still can’t believe this!) trying to climb in the window.
He was - I still can’t believe this! - trying to climb in the window.
Starbursts (formerly known as Opal Fruits) are available in all corner shops.
Robert Maxwell wasn’t dead yet (he was still suing people.)
Tom Jones(1749) was considered such a lewd book that, when two earthquakes occurred in
