human
I'm a little confused about when I should use a colon versus a semicolon. Can you help?
assistant
Colon and Semicolon
A colon is used to introduce an explanation or definition of a term or concept that follows it. It is also used to list items in a series, such as numbers or steps. A semicolon is used to separate two independent clauses in a sentence, or to separate elements within a compound sentence. For example, "The dog ran after the ball; he caught it."