No, not that….just a 'refresher' on the use of the colon in punctuation. Before a list This is the easy one. Most people get it right. We’ll take the Winter Olympics as our inspiration. I flew to Korea, taking with me: salopettes, three sets of skis, my best snowboard and a crash helmet. Before direct speech Less obvious. You don’t need a colon in front of all direct speech; but it seems right to introduce it when the speech goes on for several lines. Here a simple com

Endings are quite difficult to get right. I suppose I have read quite a few contemporary novels/thrillers over the years. The plotline is often thrilling and original and you are gripped…..at the start. By the time you reach the end – 568 pages later –there is often disappointment: anticlimax, improbable coincidences or possibly even strands in the storytelling that still ‘flutter in the wind’, unresolved. I have observed this pattern in many modern novels and in some T

Andrew, my husband, and I have been working on a project which has resulted in Focus on Tisbury, a book by Martin Shallcross. It is a collection of Martin’s contributions to theTisbury parish magazine. As he has been producing a monthly article for the magazine for over 16 years, there were quite a lot of them to choose from - presumably (16 x 12 = 192) or thereabouts. In the end, we divided the final selection into themed sections: The Farming Year, Local Farms and Busin