You wanted a period at the end of that last sentence, not a colon. When one thing says another, for example, a study says a finding, the sayer goes on the left

You wanted a period at the end of that last sentence, not a colon. When one thing says another, for example, a study says a finding, the sayer goes on the left. For example: HouseAbsolute: That's just how it's done. as in a play, or HouseAbsolute said: that's just how it's done. in the less often seen form of this use. That's just how it is done. I dislike it being done the opposite way in titles because I think it probably misleads people into thinking it's an acceptable way to use the punctuation in a typical sentence, where in fact it is backwards from the way it should be in a typical sentence. > or, sheesh, “deeply offensive” Exaggeration: something I use occasionally. (This is the appositive form of the colon, according to Wikipedia.) > There’s no ultimately “right” or “wrong” usage of punctuation. I'm not a strong prescriptive punctuationist, but I do feel we should not use misleading punctuation when we can avoid it or when it doesn't add much. A dash would be fine here, because it's a fairly typical way of showing quotation, although not historically accepted yet. The colon, however, is not.