10.1.4. Colon
A colon is most often used to indicate that an expansion, qualification, quotation or explanation is about to follow.
Do not use a colon at the end of a heading or to introduce a table or graph set in text matter (e.g. ‘as illustrated in the figure below:’). As a manuscript may not reflect the position of graphs or tables as they will appear in a proof, it is better to number them and refer to them in the text via their number.
The price per hour is shown in Figure 1.
Colons in running text should not be followed by a capital letter, except at the start of a quotation, as in the example below. There should be no space between the colon and the preceding word, letter or number:
To conclude, Mr Smith asked: ‘To what extent does this reflect reality?’
