Capitalization After Colons

(http://www.apvschicago.com/2011/04/capitalization-after-colons.html)

Understandably, many editors are confused about when to capitalize the element directly following a colon. The strategy I happen to use is pretty brain-free, which is to say that it follows AP style. Lucky for us, AP and Chicago agree on one thing before they part ways.

AP (p. 366): Lowercase the first word unless it is a proper noun or the start of a complete sentence.

• These are some of my favorite things to have for dinner: ravioli, Ethiopian food, and breakfast.
• She told me her secret ingredient: It was butter.

Chicago (6.61): Lowercase the first word unless it is a proper noun or the start of at least two complete sentences or a direct question.

• I finished reading my friend’s first draft: it was painful.
• We can do several things this weekend: We can watch King’s Speech. We can do our taxes. Or we can have a tequila party.

In my work, I come across some pretty bizarre colon usage which I’d like to eradicate. Therefore, please commit the following to memory:

• Don’t use more than one colon in the same sentence.
• Don’t add anything else to a sentence after you’ve finished introducing the element(s). For that, I prescribe a pair of em dashes to set off the element(s) instead.
• Lose the colon before a subtitle, or secondary title, when the title is displayed on a book cover (or movie poster); by convention, the colon is understood.
• Don’t use a semi-colon instead of a colon to introduce a clause. It’s like mistaking a man’s body for a woman’s body. Yes, men look like semi-colons . . . spread the word.

A note about colons and spaces: Although I, too, was raised to use two spaces after periods, colons, exclamation points, and question marks by a typewriting teacher who was alive during the Great Depression, it is no longer correct to do so, especially in this age of beautifully typeset materials. The fastest way to clean all these extra spaces from your copy is to use Microsoft Word to “find” two spaces and “replace” them with one space, and then repeat until two spaces cannot be found.

Though AP only gives the colon a scant 7 column inches of space compared to Chicago’s 2 pages’ worth, it goes out of its way to tack on a little note barring the combination of a dash and a colon. I guess emoticons can’t have noses anymore.