A Dash of Style (10 page)

The engineer couldn't climb the telephone pole because he was scared of heights.

With this:

The engineer couldn't climb the telephone pole: he was scared of heights.

In the first example, "he was scared of heights" might not have full impact. In the second example, with the colon, it cannot possibly be missed.

• The colon can be used to enhance word economy. A writer must embrace any device that helps create a tighter, more economical work, and a colon allows you to eliminate words such as "that is," "namely," and "because."

I've been meaning to tell you something, and that is that I'm pregnant.

I've been meaning to tell you something: I'm pregnant.

I didn't want to leave her alone for Christmas because her friend had just died.

I didn't want to leave her alone for Christmas: her friend had just died.

• The colon can be used to summarize. If you're describing the attributes of a character, or the elements of a house, or the methodology of a prison, and you want to take your observations and summarize them in one grand impression, the colon can do the job. Consider:

The parlor was immense, the kitchen spectacular, the two billiard rooms offered a water view and the six fireplaces were always lit: it was a palace.

In this capacity, the colon allows you to take a sentence one step further, to take your observations and parlay them into an impression. You could summarize without using a colon, but then it wouldn't necessarily be clear to the reader that the impression is the direct conclusion of all that came before. There are instances where one might want a conclusion to be distinct from the observations that preceded it; but there are also times when you need it all clearly tied together.

Along these lines, the colon can be used not only to summarize in the strict sense, but also to elucidate, to elaborate on the text that preceded it. Consider this example from Alice Walker's story "Everyday Use":

Maggie will be nervous until after her sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in corners, homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eying her sister with a mixture of envy and awe.

All of the text that follows the colon is an elucidation on what it means for Maggie to be "nervous." A lesser writer would have separated these ideas with a period. By using the colon, Walker keeps all of the images connected to the idea of being "nervous," elaborates on what that really means.

• The colon can be used to herald a list. This is often a mundane usage of the colon, but in the hands of a great creative writer, it can be transformed into an artful usage. Amy Tan, for example, uses it well in her story "Two Kinds":

America was where all my mother's hopes lay. She had come here in 1949 after losing everything in China: her mother and father, her family home, her first husband, and two daughters, twin baby girls.

The "items" in this list are not items at all, but each an incredibly powerful image, an incredibly powerful loss. By listing them like this, Tan plays against the grain of the standard usage of the colon, rattling off losses as if they are common items, and showing us the strength of the narrator's mother, who has survived so much more than we could possibly imagine, but who has compartmentalized.

Now facing the flaming sky in the west, and now facing the sharp mountains, the car followed the dusty trail down the canyons into air which began to smell of other things besides the endless ozone of the heights: orange blossoms, pepper, sun-baked excrement, burning olive oil, rotten fruit.

This comes from Paul Bowles's story "A Distant Episode." Most writers would have merely listed one or two items to convey a sense of smell; by choosing to list so many, and to use a colon to herald them, Bowles wants us to slow down, to really take in the place.

• The colon can be used to pause. Periods and semicolons provide a pause between thoughts, commas provide a pause between clauses, but no other punctuation mark can provide a substantial pause
within
the same thought. The pause created by the colon is useful for all of the colon's functions: it preps the stage for a dramatic revelation, for a summary, or for a conclusion. It gives us a slight feeling of separation, a bit of breathing room to prepare for the finale. Even the spacing required around a colon points to its ability to create separation: in the past, two spaces were required after the colon (as opposed to the mere one space required after a comma and semicolon), and hundreds of years ago, the colon was the only punctuation mark to require two spaces after it
and two spaces before it.

Sometimes a pause is necessary within the same sentence to allow something to sink in. Consider:

I want to tell you that I love you.

We don't feel a pause here, or a revelation. But if we add a colon:

I want to tell you something: I love you.

Now there is just enough of a pause to give the words impact. By adding the colon (and modifying the surrounding words accordingly) we've also created an arc to the sentence, a sense of building and of resolution.

• Just as the colon can be used to create a feeling of summary within a sentence, so can the colon, in the greatest context, be used for finality at the end of a section, chapter, or book. This is a device to be used sparingly, since the conclusion of a chapter or book is inherently dramatic, and mustn't be overdone. But when one needs a grand final sentence, sometimes only a colon will do. For example, consider this conclusion:

As they stood on the ice and watched the huge ship steam away they felt their sudden isolation, and it dawned on them that there was no turning back, that it would be a long, hard winter.

Somehow this doesn't feel as final as it could. But with a colon:

As they stood on the ice and watched the huge ship steam away they felt their sudden isolation, and it dawned on them that there was no turning back: it would be a long, hard winter.

The finality is unmistakable. The colon here is like the final drumbeat at the end of a song, like the "The End" title card that appears after the film credits have rolled. Again, in most cases a final colon would be overkill, and it is preferable to construct the final sentence in a way where the finality is inherent, and not reliant upon a colon to do its job. Nonetheless, sometimes nothing else will work, and for this sort of job, the colon has no equal.

Let's look at some examples from literature. George Bernard Shaw was famous for his use of the colon. He relied on it heavily. Many of his usages are questionable —in fact, overall, I don't think he used it well. Nonetheless, here is an interesting example from his play
Widowers' Houses.
It is especially interesting because he manages to squeeze two colons into one sentence:

The other, Mr. William de Burgh Cokane, is probably over 40, possibly 50: an ill-nourished, scanty-haired gentleman, with affected manners: fidgety, touchy, and constitutionally ridiculous in uncompassionate eyes.

A colon can work well in summing up a character, particularly after listing his attributes, and here Shaw states Mr. Cokane's age, then uses a colon to go deeper into what it means to be that age. He segues to the man's manners, then uses another colon to go deeper into precisely how these manners manifest. With Shaw, each colon is like a "zoom in" button: he touches on something, then uses a colon to bring us to the next level.

Here is an example from James Joyce's short story "The Boarding House," suggested by critically acclaimed author and writing teacher Ellen Cooney:

For her only one reparation could make up for the loss of her daughter's honour: marriage.

Notice how Joyce uses nearly the entire sentence to build to the colon, and simply a one-word revelation in its wake. The contrast is magnificent. It puts the word "marriage" in the strongest possible spotlight.

I walked close to the left wall when I entered, but it was empty: just the stairs curving up into shadows.

This is from William Faulkner's
The Sound and the Fury.
Faulkner could have used a period and broken this into two separate sentences, or used a dash to indicate an afterthought. But he chose to use a colon. By doing so, he intimates that the "stairs curving up into shadows" are an enhancement of what it means to be "empty." It is a terrifically melancholy image, and brings home to the reader the experience of emptiness.

Here's an example from the opening of Alice Munro's story "Royal Beatings":

Royal beating.
That was Flo's promise. You are going to get one Royal Beating.

The word Royal lolled on Flo's tongue, took on trappings. Rose had a need to picture things, to pursue absurdities, that was stronger than the need to stay out of trouble, and instead of taking this threat to heart she pondered: how is a beating royal?

The colon here makes us pause, makes us feel her "pondering." It also sets us up for the question she asks herself, and for her unexpected viewpoint. Note also Munro's use of other punctuation marks here: she begins by using the period heavily, with three short sentences, followed by an immediate paragraph break. Then she brings in the comma, and her sentences grow longer, culminating in her incredibly long, final sentence, a colon, then a final question mark. This varied punctuation makes us feel the impact of the colon all the more, especially since the portion of the text that precedes it is so long compared to the portion that follows it.

"When we are very young, we tend to regard the ability to use a colon much as a budding pianist regards the ability to play with crossed hands: many of us, when we are older, regard it as a proof of literary skill, maturity, even of sophistication: and many, whether young, not so young, or old. employ it gauchely, haphazardly or, at best, inconsistently."

— Eric PartridgE,
You Have a Point There

DANGER OF OVERUSE OR MISUSE

You can get away with a work devoid of colons, but if you misuse or overuse them, it will stand out, and readers will be unforgiving. Like semicolons, colons are addictive. A colon gives a writer an anchor, helps him construct a sentence —indeed, an entire thought. It enables the writer to
think
differently, in rising and falling arcs, with soaring openings and neat conclusions. But not every sentence is meant to progress in such an arc. For the reader, sentence after colon-laden sentence is like riding in a sea with endless rolling waves: he will grow seasick and want off the boat. Consider:

He went to the park every day to do one thing: feed the pigeons. He loved those damned birds more than he loved me, and I'd had enough: it was time to move out. I packed my bags, left him a note, and put it in the one place he wouldn't miss it: on his bag of bird feed.

Colons are stylistic, and demand the text around them to be stylized. Use them sparingly. If more than one or two appear per page you are probably overdoing it and should find a way to reduce them or, preferably, reconstruct your sentences in a way where the arc is inherent.

• Sometimes a colon is not truly necessary. A colon should connect two clauses only when such connection is crucial, for instance, when one clause reveals or summarizes the other. If the text after a colon reveals, then the text preceding it must build to that revelation. The clauses cannot be unrelated, or too independent. If so, they must be divided into two separate sentences. And that's the job of the period. For example, this cannot work:

My grandfather shot squirrels in his spare time: I didn't do my homework yesterday.

These two clauses are not related, and thus a colon cannot be used. In order to use a colon, the text would need to read something like this:

My grandfather shot squirrels in his spare time: he loved to kill anything that moved.

Similarly, two clauses might be vaguely related to one another, yet not make a perfect match, not truly summarize or reveal each other. Like this:

The lightbulb died while I was drinking my coffee: this coffee tastes horrible.

This sentence should either be reconstructed to make the two clauses a better match, like this:

The lightbulb died while I was drinking my coffee: the electricity in this building is awful.

Or be reconstructed without a colon, like this:

The lightbulb died while I was drinking my coffee. This coffee tastes horrible.

If the connection between two clauses isn't perfect, then a colon should not be present.

• Conversely, relying too heavily on the colon can lead you to create half sentences, form half thoughts, where the first clause of the sentence cannot be completed without the second, and the second clause cannot exist without the first. While the two clauses must be connected and relevant to each other, at the same time you cannot allow this to be an excuse to write flimsy, half clauses that cannot exist without their colon counterparts. The colon strengthens the sentence as a whole, yet it weakens the individual parts, as they can no longer exist without each other. Consider:

I went to the movies on Tuesday afternoons: that was when tickets were half price.

Technically, the first portion of this sentence could stand on its own, but it would be hard to make a case that the second portion could (unless the writing is stylized), and even the first portion would make a weak sentence. Ultimately, the two clauses of this sentence need each other to allow a full thought. You can get away with this from time to time, but if you rely heavily on this sort of construction, your sentences will become too dependent on the colon. As a rule, the text preceding and following a colon must be more independent than text demarcated by a comma, yet less independent than text demarcated by a semicolon. For example, this sentence could exist without a colon if need be: