Day 91: Series in sentences do not require colons.

You want to write a sentence that has a string of items in it. Do you or don’t you use a colon to introduce that string of items? Depends. If the items are in a series, then you don’t use a colon.

Items in a series are part of the grammatical structure of the sentence. If you use a colon, you set them apart from the grammatical structure of the sentence. That’s what a colon does. Thus, if you use a colon for a series, you remove the items from the grammatical structure of the sentence, and the sentence will be incomplete.

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This is how a series differs from a list. A list can be removed, but a series can’t. Consider this sentence.

“The man went to the store to buy a hammer, find a hat, and replace his handkerchief.”

The three items in the series cannot be removed without creating a sentence fragment. “The man went to the store to:” is not a complete sentence. The only way to make this example grammatically correct is to leave out the colon.