I'm working on a long-term writing and editing project that involves short promo pieces that are distributed to my client's clients periodically. It so happens that one of those client-clients is an editor. When she got a recent promo piece, she responded with a list of suggestions which my client then passed along to me for review.

Most of the comments were style recommendations that were simply a matter of preference. But one was not and, to me, stood out like a sore thumb. It said, "Generally we cap a full sentence after a colon, but not everyone does that."

I did my due diligence and checked my sources. I sent the following response back to my client:

This just goes to show that we never know it all. I've never, ever seen that done anywhere unless the sentence following is an indirect quote or some sort of semi-formal declaration. (Ex: I promise you this: You haven't heard the last of me!) So I checked Chicago Manual of Style, which is generally considered to be the "gold standard" of editing. It says to cap when a full sentence follows a colon and gives three example sentences. However, one of the examples given is not, indeed, capitalized when the material after the colon is clearly a full sentence! Confusing at best. So I also checked Associated Press Stylebook. Often AP is loosey-goosey about the rules Chicago insists upon. But in this case, AP is crystal clear: do it. I'm thinking this little-known rule should be the tip for my next Word-wise post. Thanks for the inspiration!

Of course there are several lessons to be learned here. The first one is the actual capitalization-after-colon rule. It's certainly a rule that was new to me, but you can believe I won't mistake it again.

Second, as I said in my response, we never know it all. That's doubly true when...
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The Word-wise Blog is authored by VAF member AnnaLisa of Admin Maven.


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