On Sun, Oct 11, 2009 at 11:47:45AM -0400, Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH wrote: > On Oct 11, 2009, at 06:36 , Mark J. Reed wrote: >> That's not grammatical; you've just created a run-on sentence. Why >> not >> leave it as a colon? > > Or semicolon. I agree comma seems wrong.
Colon is correct here because the second phrase defines what we mean in the first phrase. It could also be viewed as a logical consequence, though semantically it's more like a final cause. But in general a colon indicates that we're explaining what we mean in the first part, which is a tighter relationship than the mere juxtaposion of semicolon, which leaves the reader to work out the relationship. Larry
