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
Reference mark Reference mark The reference mark or reference symbol (※) is a punctuation mark used in Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) writing. It is used to call attention to an important sentence or thought, like a prologue or footnote. In contrast to the European asterisk, it is not used for connecting a specific place in the text directly to the footnote, but rather for notes directly before or after the passage. Its Japanese name, (; , , ), refers to the similarity of the character to the for "rice" (). Its Korean name, ' (), literally means "reference mark". It is