Editing Colon (punctuation) (section)

===Spacing and parentheses===
{{See also|Sentence spacing}}
In print, a thin space was traditionally placed before a colon and a thick space after it. In modern [[English-language]] printing, no space is placed before a colon and a single space is placed after it.<ref>{{cite book |last1=DeRespinis |first1=Francis |last2=Hayward |first2=Peter |last3=Jenkins |first3=Jana |last4=Laird |first4=Amy |last5=McDonald |first5=Leslie |last6=Radzinski |first6=Eric |title=The IBM Style Guide: Conventions for Writers and Editors |date=2012 |publisher=IBM Press |location=Boston |page=43}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Gibaldi |first1=Joseph |title=MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing |date=2008 |publisher=Modern Language Association of America |location=New York |page=91}}</ref> In [[French language|French-language]] typing and printing, the traditional rules are preserved.

One or two spaces may be and have been used after a colon. The older convention (designed to be used by [[monospaced font]]s) was to use ''two'' spaces after a colon.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Paterson |first1=Derek |title=How many spaces after a colon? |url=http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4279434#post4279434 |work=Absolute Write forums |date=19 November 2009 |access-date=4 November 2012 |at=Post 4 |quote=Back in the typewriter day, when fading ink ribbons could result in commas being mistaken for periods and vice versa, typists were taught to insert 2 spaces after the period to differentiate between the two. The same happened with colons and semicolons: 2 spaces were left after a colon; 1 space after a semicolon. |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130927105919/http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4279434#post4279434 |archive-date=27 September 2013 |url-status=live}}</ref>

In modern typography, a colon will be placed outside the closing [[parenthesis]] introducing a list. In very early English typography, it could be placed inside, as seen in [[Roger Williams]]' 1643 book about the Native American languages of New England.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://archive.org/details/keyintolanguageo04will/page/52/mode/2up |title=A key into the language of America |year=1643}}</ref>