2012年12月英语四六级写作技巧之规范使用标点
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冒号的用法冒号表示停顿,其停顿时间比分号长比句号短。它可用逗号,有时也可用句号代替。尽管现在冒号的使用不如50到75年前频繁,但现在它使用仍很方便,因为它告诉读者其后仍是对上文进一步的陈述。冒号还能产生轻微的戏剧效果。
冒号常用于引出一个词、短语、或完整的句子(子句)来强调,举例解释,或证明刚才所说过的内容。
注意:冒号之后的词可用大写也可用小写字母开头。如果冒号之后的词是另一个完整句子的开始,则用大写字母开头。反之,如果冒号之后的词只是句子的一部分,则用小写字母开头。
例 May I offer you a suggestion: don’t drive without your seat belts fastened.
The thought continued to perplex him: Where will I go next?
用于引出一连串用来解释或强调已叙述过的内容。如:
In the basement, he kept some equipment for his experiments: the test tubes, some chemical agents, three sun-lamps, and the drill.
冒号后常为缩排且不用引号、与全文分离的长引文。
President Jiang Zemin enjoys quoting the first line of Lincoln’s Gettysburg address:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
精典范例
There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
--英国作家Oscar Wide
写作时,切忌这样写:
The four major reasons for the landslide victory were: the candidate’s personal popularity, the enthusiastic support of his party, his stand on budget issues, and the general mood of the nation.
这样用的问题在哪?问题出在冒号用于动词were之后,你可能在英语为母语的人写的报纸或流行刊物中见到这类用法,但它在学术写作中不被大学教师所接受。 在学术论文中,主语补足语或直接宾语应紧跟在冒号之后。主语补足语的修饰词(obvious)使原本存在句子中的问题得到解决:冒号不应紧跟在动词之后。
上面例题中,取得压倒性胜利的四个原因是明显的:the candidate’s personal popularity, the enthusiastic support of his party, his stand on budget issues, and the general mood of the nation.
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2012年12月英语四六级写作技巧汇总