Common Writing Errors 2: Use of the Colon for Lists

Hi Everyone

Something came up in the last couple of weeks that I thought may be of interest. I was working on a big editing and proofreading project for a corporate client and someone queried whether or not a colon should be used for a certain sentence ending with a dot point list. I said it wasn’t needed and then had to explain why. As is generally the case with grammar questions, sometimes you know the correct answer but can’t quite articulate the reason for it, or even if you can, you can’t articulate it in a way that someone else can understand. So, after thinking more about the situation afterwards, I hope what I’ve written below may help people clarify the use of the colon in the context of lists and dot points.

Below is an example of the type of list sentence that seems to cause confusion (and notice the use of a colon to state that an example follows):

She wore a cherry red bandana, a striped eye patch, an electronic parrot on her shoulder, animated tattoos on her arms, white blouse, black trousers, and a lightsaber at her waist.

Image of a real life female pirate: Mary Read, (1690-1720), British Pirate's Mate.
Raised as a boy, married twice,fought like a man and died of scarlet fever.
Unfortunately, no lightsabers in the 18th century. Source here.

When written this way, it’s obvious the list is the object of the verb ‘wore’. In this situation, you don’t need any punctuation after the verb; that is, you wouldn’t write

She wore: a cherry red banana, a striped eye patch…

So far, so good. However, some people seem to have trouble when such a sentence is put into bullet/dot point form. Often, I see the following construction:

She wore:

• a cherry red bandana
• a striped eye patch
• an electronic parrot on her shoulder
• animated tattoos on her arms
• white blouse
• black trousers
• a light sabre at her waist

The dot point form is generally used to make the list easier to follow, but technically it is still a single sentence. If one wants to quibble, the list should look like this:

She wore

• a cherry red bandana,
• a striped eye patch,
• an electronic parrot on her shoulder,
• animated tattoos on her arms,
• white blouse,
• black trousers, and
• a light sabre at her waist.

However, with the push to punctuation simplification, especially in the business world, the list might look like this:

She wore

• a cherry red bandana
• a striped eye patch
• an electronic parrot on her shoulder
• animated tattoos on her arms
• white blouse
• black trousers
• a light sabre at her waist.

(The full stop at the end is optional. Such decisions are dependent on an organisation’s style guide.)

And to commemorate lightsabers, here's a poster for the new Star Wars film. Source here.

Now, by slightly modifying the original sentence, we can examine the proper use of a colon for lists. Here it is:

She wore the following: a cherry red bandana, a striped eye patch, an electronic parrot on her shoulder, animated tattoos on her arms, white blouse, black trousers, and a light sabre at her waist.

To convert this sentence into a dot point list, we would do something like this:

She wore the following:

• a cherry red bandana
• a striped eye patch
• an electronic parrot on her shoulder
• animated tattoos on her arms
• white blouse
• black trousers
• a light sabre at her waist.

The keen-eyed among you may have noticed the underlined words. These are what I call ‘direction’ words, which indicate that a list follows. As is obvious from the last list example, such words require the use of a colon.

The more keen-eyed among you may have noticed such ‘direction’ words don’t have to be at the end of the line preceding the list, as in the ‘Here it is’ example above. Although the list follows a verb, the object of the verb is ‘here’, not the list: ‘It is here’.

So, the guidelines for colon use in a list are below:

1. Use a colon when the list follows a ‘direction’ word
2. Don’t use a colon when the list is the object of a verb

And remember, these guidelines apply whether you use a sentence or a list of dot points.

I hope that makes sense to you. I welcome any queries and comments.

All the best

Earl