On Fri, 16 Mar 2012 17:53:24 +0000, Neil Cerutti wrote: > On 2012-03-16, Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> > wrote: >> Ah, perhaps you're talking about *prescriptivist* grammarians, who >> insist on applying grammatical rules that exist only in their own >> fevered imagination. Sorry, I was talking about the other sort, the >> ones who apply the grammatical rules used by people in real life. You >> know the ones: linguists. My mistake. > > I am not pedantic. You are wrong.
Whether you like it or not, it simply is a fact that in English (I won't speak for other languages) people use colons without the first clause *necessarily* being a complete sentence. They write things like this: Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope Also like these: Example: this is an example of a colon following a sentence fragment. Last update: Oct 4, 2007. Shopping list: - eggs - milk - cheese They even use the reverse construction: Lists, quotations, explanations, examples: some of the things which follow after a colon. Check the use of colons here: http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2012-03-15/features/bal-the-raven-reviews-20120313_1_edgar-allan-poe-john-cusack-mystery-writer I count at least ten colons on the page (including the title) and *not one of them* uses a complete sentence before the colon. While it is common for the clause preceding the colon to be an independent clause (i.e. it would stand alone as a complete sentence) it is not required that it be so. I think I'll end this with a quote from Gore Vidal: "The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so." http://grammar.about.com/od/c/g/colon.htm -- Steven -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list