冒号的用法

冒号表示停顿，其停顿时间比分号长比句号短。它可用逗号，有时也可用句号代替。尽管现在冒号的使用不如50到75年前频繁，但现在它使用仍很方便，因为它告诉读者其后仍是对上文进一步的陈述。冒号还能产生轻微的戏剧效果。

冒号常用于引出一个词、短语、或完整的句子（子句）来强调，举例解释，或证明刚才所说过的内容。

注意：冒号之后的词可用大写也可用小写字母开头。如果冒号之后的词是另一个完整句子的开始，则用大写字母开头。反之，如果冒号之后的词只是句子的一部分，则用小写字母开头。

例  May I offer you a suggestion: don't drive without your seat belts fastened.

The thought continued to perplex him: Where will I go next?

用于引出一连串用来解释或强调已叙述过的内容。如：
In the basement, he kept some equipment for his experiments: the test tubes, some chemical agents, three sun-lamps, and the drill.

冒号后常为缩排且不用引号、与全文分离的长引文。

President Jiang Zemin enjoys quoting the first line of Lincoln's Gettysburg address:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

精典范例

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
--英国作家Oscar Wide

写作时，切忌这样写：

The four major reasons for the landslide victory were: the candidate's personal popularity, the enthusiastic support of his party, his stand on budget issues, and the general mood of the nation.

这样用的问题在哪？问题出在冒号用于动词were之后，你可能在英语为母语的人写的报纸或流行刊物中见到这类用法，但它在学术写作中不被大学教师所接受。 在学术论文中，主语补足语或直接宾语应紧跟在冒号之后。主语补足语的修饰词(obvious)使原本存在句子中的问题得到解决：冒号不应紧跟在动词之后。

上面例题中，取得压倒性胜利的四个原因是明显的：the candidate's personal popularity, the enthusiastic support of his party, his stand on budget issues, and the general mood of the nation.