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Subject:Re: infinitive phrases/colons & lists From:"Halo" <halo -at- mintech -dot- co -dot- il> To:techwr-l Date:Tue, 27 Jun 2000 09:05:47 +0200
Hello fellow listers,
To make things more interesting.... (picking up from last week, so apologies
for the slow reaction).
Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications (2nd edition)
contradicts Marilynne's entry from the Chicago Manual of Style, 14th
edition:
Under COLONS:
"Use a colon at the end of a sentece or a phrase that introduces a list. Do
not use a colon to introduce art, tables, or sectiosn or following a
procedure heading."
Their example follows.
"The basic configuration for your computer system includes:
* A HDD with 24MB of free disk space and at least one floppy disk drive.
* A monitor supportted by MS Windows."
Under LISTS:
"Introduce a list with a sentence or fragment ending with a colon."
This also bring up another topic discussed here recently regarding the case
that should be applied to the first word of each item.
Under COLONS:
"Capitalization after a colon
Do not capitalize the word following a colon within a sentence unless the
word is a proper noun or the next following colon is a complete sentence
[...]. Do capitalize the first word of each item in a list, however."
Under LISTS:
"Begin each entry in a bulleted or numbered list with a capital letter."
However, for "Unnembered single-column and multicolumn lists"... "You need
not capitalize entries."
I guess we get to decide what we like, write a book about it and let others
scratch their heads ;-)
