21st Century Grammar Handbook by Barbara Ann Kipfer

forums—in our age the “formal” and the “familiar” mix and blur. In part, the fuzzing of borders between high and low styles results from the twentieth-century literary trend toward incorporating speech patterns into written art (a trend not limited to but most marked in our age). More and more words were written in poems, stories, and novels as various populations spoke them, andmore and more variants and violations of grammar
rules
and standards began to appear in print as a reflection of the looser way people speak.
    Newspapers, magazines, and other public forms of communication led or furthered this deformalization of communication, as did the explosion of commercial and business writing that became more public in our age as education became universal, the working place became an acceptable topic of conversation and writing, and daily lives of all people took center stage in general.
    With the emergence of the colloquial came the decline of the formal, standard, rule-driven ways of speaking and writing. Decline, but not disappearance. There are still many moments, places, and people that demand grammatically correct language. And, as is pointed out repeatedly in this book, the safest, clearest, most economical way to communicate is still
standard English
in most circumstances.
    However, it is also true that violations of virtually every rule of English
grammar
in some way in speech and writing have been, quite rightly, rewarded with the loftiest recognition and prizes. Similarly, grammatically correct but stuffy, stilted, boring language has been, again quite rightly, mercilessly mocked in satire, comedy, and other forums. The demand to speak the common language, to make oneself understood to as many people as possible is profoundly democratic and pervasive in our society. It allows the colloquial to penetrate the high, formal style at will.
    That means the choices available to writers and speakers today are immense, but guidance in deciding what is theright choice in the right circumstance is harder to come by. Perhaps that is a price of democratization of language. See also
dialect
and
language.
    Colon. The colon
punctuation
mark (:) sets off two more or less equal but quite distinct parts of a
sentence.
It can introduce
lists,
stand before full sentences that exemplify what previous
clauses
have delineated, or simply indicate that what follows illustrates what has gone before. Unlike a
semicolon,
which makes an abrupt break between segments of a sentence, the colon suggests that what follows is somehow equivalent to or illustrative of what has come before it. Here are some examples: “We saw the following: a car, a bridge, a horse.” “Your order consists of two parts: the main shipment and the packaging.” “The president made the following statement: ‘Dear friends…’”.
    Note that anything following a colon is not capitalized unless it begins a full sentence (as when a colon is used to introduce a
quotation)
or is a word that in itself requires
capitalization
(such as a
name).
Generally, a colon is not necessary if no punctuation or simpler marking is possible. Thus a listing of items need not be introduced by a colon (“We saw a car, a bridge, and a horse.” “He said, ‘Dear friends…’ ”). Use a colon mainly when it is necessary to draw some attention to a separate but equivalent part of a sentence.
    Come, came, come. An
irregular verb
in its main,
past tense,
and past
participle
forms.
    Comma. The comma
punctuation
mark (,) has many uses, most of which are changing rapidly in modern
usage.
Where commas used to be necessary, they are no longer needed; where they never appeared, they now sometimes pop up. Some specific kinds of texts have firmer
rules
about commas than others; take into account the
audience
for which you are writing and its expectations.
    The basic function of a comma is to separate two or more elements of a
sentence.
The elements might be
clauses
or
nouns
in