[color=red]
!
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…
stick your ! up your !
Aren’t there better things to do with exclamation marks? 
?
: )
I have a serious question. I’m presently reviewing a long letter from a British lawyer that repeatedly uses colons (and dashes) thusly:
[quote]Our client’s position is that:-
a.
b.
c.
Our client further contends that:-
d.
e.
f.[/quote]
That’s seriously wrong, isn’t it?
FIRST, it’s my understanding that the language preceding a colon should be independent, so that if you removed the colon and list you could instead use a period, as shown below.
[quote]Our client contends as follows:
a.
b.
c.
Our client also makes the following contentions:
d.
e.
f.[/quote]
SECOND, one should never place a dash or hyphen after the colon as they did. The colon alone suffices.
I raise the question because I think I recall seeing other british lawyers punctuating the same way and I wondered if they do it differently (ie., wrongly) over there. Aside from the possibility that Brits may do it differently, my points are correct with respect to American English, aren’t they?
Stupidest thread ever. Period.
[quote=“Mother Theresa”]I have a serious question. I’m presently reviewing a long letter from a British lawyer that repeatedly uses colons (and dashes) thusly:
[quote]Our client’s position is that:-
a.
b.
c.
Our client further contends that:-
d.
e.
f.[/quote]
That’s seriously wrong, isn’t it?
FIRST, it’s my understanding that the language preceding a colon should be independent, so that if you removed the colon and list you could instead use a period, as shown below.
[quote]Our client contends as follows:
a.
b.
c.
Our client also makes the following contentions:
d.
e.
f.[/quote]
SECOND, one should never place a dash or hyphen after the colon as they did. The colon alone suffices.
I raise the question because I think I recall seeing other british lawyers punctuating the same way and I wondered if they do it differently (ie., wrongly) over there. Aside from the possibility that Brits may do it differently, my points are correct with respect to American English, aren’t they?[/quote]
I contend that saying “as follows” in the sentence "Our client contends as follows: " is redundant. Surely one could say
“Our client contends:
a. that he is the alpha and the omega
b. that he regularly converts wine into water on a pro bono basis
c. that he’d like to buy the world a coke”
I agree with you that the dash is completely out of place.
I second that emoticon.
I third it (on the radio).
[quote=“Mother Theresa”]I have a serious question. I’m presently reviewing a long letter from a British lawyer that repeatedly uses colons (and dashes) thusly:
[quote]Our client’s position is that:-
a.
b.
c.
Our client further contends that:-
d.
e.
f.[/quote]
That’s seriously wrong, isn’t it?
FIRST, it’s my understanding that the language preceding a colon should be independent, so that if you removed the colon and list you could instead use a period, as shown below.
[quote]Our client contends as follows:
a.
b.
c.
Our client also makes the following contentions:
d.
e.
f.[/quote]
SECOND, one should never place a dash or hyphen after the colon as they did. The colon alone suffices.
I raise the question because I think I recall seeing other british lawyers punctuating the same way and I wondered if they do it differently (ie., wrongly) over there. Aside from the possibility that Brits may do it differently, my points are correct with respect to American English, aren’t they?[/quote]
Brits commonly use a colon + hyphen when the things that follow are on a separate line below. This convention is not used in the US.
Sometimes when we have stuff translated into French, it comes back with a space before the colon. I don’t know if that’s just the way they do it in France or if it’s just a stupid translator.
[quote=“Chris”]
Brits commonly use a colon + hyphen when the things that follow are on a separate line below. This convention is not used in the US.[/quote]
Yeah, 's fine. Formal but normal.
u , church on friday ur sr mr .
Oxford comma
FTW!
Yes, yes, and thrice, yes. Clarity reigns, here in the shires, DD.
From the Chicago Manual of Style:
[quote]6.129 Vertical lists punctuated as a sentence
In a numbered vertical list that completes a sentence begun in an introductory element and consists of phrases or sentences with internal punctuation, semicolons may be used between the items, and a period should follow the final item. Each item begins with a lowercase letter. Such lists, often better run into the text, should be set vertically only if the context demands that they be highlighted.
Reporting for the Development Committee, Jobson reported that
- a fundraising campaign director was being sought;
- the salary for this director, about $50,000 a year, would be paid out of campaign funds;
- the fundraising campaign would be launched in the spring of 2005.
If bullets were used instead of numbers in the example above, the punctuation and capitalization would remain the same.[/quote]
Straydog, I’ve got no issues with semicolons; it’s only odd colon usage that irks me.
And – HA – I have been vindicated. Although I’ve seen more than one high-level British lawyer place a hyphen immediately after a colon, before starting a list (like this 
I felt certain that was wrong. So I googled just now and found no reference to the practice, even in UK sources such as this one:
howtolearnenglish.co.uk/colo … glish.html
Then, I finally found one UK source that referred to the practice and strongly advises that it is WRONG.
[quote]
the colon is never preceded by a white space; it is always followed by a single white space in normal use, and it is never, never, never followed by a hyphen or a dash ‹ in spite of what you might have been taught in school. One of the commonest of all punctuation mistakes is following a colon with a completely pointless hyphen
. [/quote]
informatics.sussex.ac.uk/dep … ode16.html
So, my conclusion is that the practice is a bad (incorrect) habit learned by some (especially solicitors, apparently) in the UK.
Just ran it through the British National Corpus and there are lots of examples. Also a fair few in the BNC Legal texts. It’s not in any of the main British publishers’ house guides such as Hart’s or Butcher’s, but it doesn’t seem to be a rare usage.
Also, I guess a lot of legal docs and letters are produced by secretaries and administrators – I know my sister (law bod) dictates all her stuff and whenever my sister has corrected her English, it’s nearly started WW3. It’s always politics with those type-y, phone-y, cakes on Friday sort of women …