Timeline for Colon use when introducing a list split across sentences
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
4 events
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| Jan 13, 2011 at 16:11 | comment | added | Dr. Wily's Apprentice | Hmm, I agree with you there. I think when I first read it I felt that the commas separating the nouns and prepositional phrases were unnecessary, though I suppose that's a matter of style. In the back of my mind I was also thinking that it might not be valid to use semi-colons or full-stops without a complete [Subject] [Predicate] clause, but after looking around a bit this seems perfectly acceptable. | |
| Jan 13, 2011 at 14:39 | comment | added | user3444 | If you keep the qualifying statements 'to provide...' etc., and use commas to separate the list elements, you introduce a lot of commas. Using semi-colons separates the list into [subject] [reason]; [subject] [reason] etc. and thus makes it easier to read. If you lose the qualifiers, then yes, you could simply say 'We required three ingredients: eggs, milk, and flour.' | |
| Jan 13, 2011 at 14:21 | comment | added | Dr. Wily's Apprentice | Thanks for the suggestion. I've run into this problem as well, so I'll keep this approach in mind. I notice that in this version with the semi-colons the "Firstly", "Secondly", and "Finally" are removed. Not trying to nitpick, but after reading this version with semi-colons I wondered if this particular example would work just as well with commas instead. "We required three ingredients: firstly eggs to provide ..., secondly milk for all ..., and finally flour to bind ..." Would it be better to revise the example with full clauses instead of prepositional phrases? | |
| Jan 13, 2011 at 14:07 | history | answered | user3444 | CC BY-SA 2.5 |