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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—in American English—to separate hours and minutes, for business letter salutations and in formal letter writing.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.gcsu.edu/writingcenter/colonrules.htm )〕 In Unicode, it is encoded at . Its alt code is alt+58.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Alt Codes )〕 ==Usage== 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 it. In modern American English usage, a complete sentence precedes a colon, while a list, description, explanation, or definition follows it. The elements which follow the colon may or may not be a complete sentence: since the colon is preceded by a sentence, it is a complete sentence whether what follows the colon is another sentence or not. While it is acceptable to capitalize the first letter after the colon in American English, British English does not.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.englishgrammar.org/punctuation-colon/ )〕 ;colon used before list :''Williams was so hungry he ate everything in the house: chips, cold pizza, pretzels and dip, hot dogs, peanut butter and candy.'' ;colon used before a description :''Jane is so desperate that she'll date anyone, even Tom: he's uglier than a squashed toad on the highway, and that's on his good days.'' ;colon before definition :''For years while I was reading Shakespeare's ''Othello'' and criticism on it, I had to constantly look up the word "egregious" since the villain uses that word: outstandingly bad or shocking.'' ;colon before explanation :''I had a rough weekend: I had chest pain and spent all Saturday and Sunday in the emergency room.'' Some writers use fragments (incomplete sentences) before a colon for emphasis or stylistic preferences (to show a character's voice in literature), as in this example: :''Dinner: chips and juice. What a well-rounded diet I have.'' The Bedford Handbook describes several uses of a colon. For example, one can use a colon after an independent clause to direct attention to a list, an appositive or a quotation, and it can be used between independent clauses if the second summarizes or explains the first. In non-literary or non-expository uses, one may use a colon after the salutation in a formal letter, to indicate hours and minutes, to show proportions, between a title and subtitle, and between city and publisher in bibliographic entries. Luca Serianni, an Italian scholar who helped to define and develop the colon as a punctuation mark, identified four punctuational modes for it: ''syntactical-deductive'', ''syntactical-descriptive'', ''appositive'', and ''segmental''. Although Serianni wrote this guide for the Italian language, his definitions apply also to English and many other languages. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Colon (punctuation)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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