Colon (punctuation) 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 colon is to inform the reader that what follows the colon proves, explains, defines, describes, or lists elements of what preceded
Hanging punctuation Hanging punctuation Hanging punctuation or exdentation is a way of typesetting punctuation marks and bullet points, most commonly quotation marks and hyphens, so that they do not disrupt the ‘flow’ of a body of text or ‘break’ the margin of alignment. It is so called because the punctuation appears to ‘hang’ in the margin of the text, and is not incorporated into the block or column of text. It is commonly used when text is fully justified. The style was used by Gutenberg in the Gutenberg Bible, the first book printed in Europe. Very few desktop publishing applications allow for