After the expressions the following or as follows but NOT after for example, including, such as, or that is
- You are required to use three of the following resource types for your paper: books, journal articles, and encyclopedias.
After an independent clause or a dependent clause. It may link two separate clauses or phrases by indicating a step forward from the first clause to the second.
- I know why he was hired for the job: he is the owner's nephew.
Between two independent clauses when the second modifies the first.
- This restaurant is my favorite: it is cheap and they never clean the grill.
To indicate a quotation that is formally announced.
- As my dad always says: "Measure once, cut twice."
Before a list, an explanation, or a definition that is preceded by a clause that can stand alone.
- He had spent half his savings on upgrades for his car: heated seats, remote start system, and fender flares.
After a greeting in formal correspondence.
Between the hour and minute in time
To introduce a long formal quotation.
- The author concludes this section by emphasizing that the problem is more dire than the statistics suggests:
- The United States doesn't just tuck its poor under overpasses and into mobile home parks far removed from central business districts. It disappears them into jails and prisons, effectively erasing them: The incarcerated are simply not counted in most national surveys, resulting in a falsely rosy statistical picture of American progress. Poverty measures exclude everyone in prison and jail—not to mention those housed in psych wards, halfway houses, and homeless shelters—which means there are millions more poor Americans than official statistics let on. (Desmond 19).
Between volumes and page numbers or chapters and verses