Colon (punctuation) sounds can also be denoted by asterisks or other punctuation marks. Colons can also be used to represent eyes in emoticons. Colon (punctuation) The colon ( : ) is a punctuation mark consisting of two equally sized dots centered on the same vertical line. A colon precedes an explanation or an enumeration, or list. A colon is also used with ratios, titles and subtitles of books, city and publisher in bibliographies, Biblical citations between chapter and verse, and for salutations business letters and other formal letter writing, and often to separate hours and minutes. The most common use of the
Punctuation of English "British" (typically used in the UK, Ireland, and most of the Commonwealth of Nations) and "American" (also common in Canada and places with a strong American influence on local English, as in the Philippines). These two styles differ mainly in the way in which they handle quotation marks with adjacent punctuation, and the use or omission of the full point (period) with contraction abbreviations. The terms "open" and "closed punctuation" have been applied to minimizing versus comprehensively including punctuation, respectively, aside from any dialectal trends. Closed punctuation is used in scholarly, literary, general business, and "everyday" writing. Open style dominates