Colon followed by a list of questions: Question marks or commas?

lisa...@maine.edu

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Nov 21, 2013, 8:37:55 AM11/21/13

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When writing a sentence that has a list of questions following a colon, should you separate the questions with commas or question marks? For example, The following questions are all great thought starters: What if it likes poetry? What if it has a favorite book? What if you made a commercial? What if your idea had a theme song?

Any help or ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks Don for pointing out my inaccurate wording.

Lisa

Peter T. Daniels

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Nov 21, 2013, 8:57:16 AM11/21/13

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See reply in previous thread.

Certainly in that example there would be no reason not to phrase and
write them as questions.

Of course now I'm wondering what the "it" is that might like poetry
or books.

John Varela

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Nov 21, 2013, 2:14:46 PM11/21/13

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On Thu, 21 Nov 2013 13:37:55 UTC, lisa...@maine.edu wrote:

> When writing a sentence that has a list of questions following a colon, should you separate the questions with commas

No.

> or question marks?

Yes.

--
John Varela

Peter Moylan

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Nov 21, 2013, 8:04:05 PM11/21/13

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And remove the colon.

--
Peter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org
For an e-mail address, see my web page.

Peter T. Daniels

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Nov 21, 2013, 11:12:54 PM11/21/13

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On Thursday, November 21, 2013 8:04:05 PM UTC-5, Peter Moylan wrote:
> On 22/11/13 06:14, John Varela wrote:
> > On Thu, 21 Nov 2013 13:37:55 UTC, lisa...@maine.edu wrote:

> >> When writing a sentence that has a list of questions following a colon, should you separate the questions with commas
>
> > No.
>
> >> or question marks?
>
> > Yes.
>
> And remove the colon.

No.

Dr Nick

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Nov 22, 2013, 2:52:33 AM11/22/13

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Peter Moylan <pe...@pmoylan.org.invalid> writes:

> On 22/11/13 06:14, John Varela wrote:
>> On Thu, 21 Nov 2013 13:37:55 UTC, lisa...@maine.edu wrote:
>>
>>> When writing a sentence that has a list of questions following a colon, should you separate the questions with commas
>>
>> No.
>>
>>> or question marks?
>>
>> Yes.
>>
> And remove the colon.

I disagree. Strict rules may say that, as the following questions are
stand-alone sentences, but logic and "rhythm" makes a colon the natural
thing there.

John Varela

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Nov 22, 2013, 3:42:11 PM11/22/13

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On Fri, 22 Nov 2013 01:04:05 UTC, Peter Moylan
<pe...@pmoylan.org.invalid> wrote:

> On 22/11/13 06:14, John Varela wrote:
> > On Thu, 21 Nov 2013 13:37:55 UTC, lisa...@maine.edu wrote:
> >
> >> When writing a sentence that has a list of questions following a colon, should you separate the questions with commas
> >
> > No.
> >
> >> or question marks?
> >
> > Yes.
> >
> And remove the colon.

I understand a colon to mean "I have led you to expect something and
here it comes", and that would apply in the OP's example.

--
John Varela

Skitt

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Nov 22, 2013, 4:12:39 PM11/22/13

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On 11/21/2013 5:04 PM, Peter Moylan wrote:
> On 22/11/13 06:14, John Varela wrote:
>> On Thu, 21 Nov 2013 13:37:55 UTC, lisa...@maine.edu wrote:

>>> When writing a sentence that has a list of questions following a colon, should you separate the questions with commas
>>
>> No.
>>
>>> or question marks?
>>
>> Yes.
>>
> And remove the colon.
>

No, but that is specifically for this particular example, because the
lead-in phrase is a complete sentence that can stand on its own.

The following questions are all great thought starters: What
if it likes poetry? What if it has a favorite book? What if
you made a commercial? What if your idea had a theme song?

See http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/marks/colon.htm
for explanation and whether a colon is applicable, or not.
--
Skitt (SF Bay Area)
http://home.comcast.net/~skitt99/main.html

Athel Cornish-Bowden

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Nov 22, 2013, 5:30:53 PM11/22/13

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I agree (with that and with John's earlier no and yes).

Where I have doubt is whether the questions should start with capital
letters, as we are taught (at least, I was) that a colon is followed by
a lower-case letter. That works fine if the colon is followed by a
series of statements separated by semicolons, but a lower-case letter
looks odd after a question mark, and it would also look odd to put a
lower-case letter after the colon but capitals after the question
marks. In practice I'd probably do what the OP did.

--
athel

John Holmes

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Nov 23, 2013, 1:56:31 AM11/23/13

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Since the questions are all complete sentences, it might be better to
set it out something like this-->

The following questions are all great thought starters:

--What if it likes poetry?
--What if it has a favorite book?
--What if you made a commercial?
--What if your idea had a theme song?

--
Regards
John
for mail: my initials plus a u e
at tpg dot com dot au

Athel Cornish-Bowden

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Nov 23, 2013, 7:17:49 AM11/23/13

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Very French, that is, starting each item with an en dash. I don't
remember seeing it done in English, though.

--
athel

John Varela

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Nov 24, 2013, 2:57:17 PM11/24/13

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The dashes aside, this is exactly what I usually did back when I
used to write business letters and technical documents. Whenever a
series got too long or complex and I wanted to be certain sure that
everything was perfectly clear, I would go to a bulleted list. Or,
If I were going to refer back to any of the items, instead of
bullets I would label the items a, b, c... or number them.

Some people do object to bulleted lists but IMO they do wonders for
clarity. Of course I wasn't trying to write literature, I was just
trying to be clear.

--
John Varela