Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Pet Peeve: Colons in Headings

No, not THAT kind of colon.
Are you one of those people who puts a colon at the end of a heading?

(Listen up, friends and colleagues at F.A. Davis!)

You know the type I mean. They're the people who bold and underline an all-cap heading, and then stick a colon at the end, like so:

CORPORATE STRATEGY:

You know the type? Of course you do.

STOP DOING THAT!

No, I mean it, stop it. Right now. Don't ever do it again.

Using a colon in such cases is utterly redundant. You've already set up the words as a heading, what with all that bold and capitals, so what's the colon for?

Stop the madness, and just say NO.

And don't even get me started about that whole underlining thing. What, you don't know Control-I?

Okay, that's my rant on colons after headings.