| Comment | Actually, in English we often use a comma to introduce an indirect quote or indirectly reported speech, instead of a colon as in German.
But a more important question is, Can a way out be found?
She wondered to herself, Can I find a way out?
I would also avoid the colon in your example because it comes immediately after a verb. I read that rule somewhere or other -- Strunk? no idea -- and agree, because it's usually unnecessary. That is, it's better to write not
*The colors are: red, green, and blue
but simply
The colors are red, green, and blue.
In formal writing, you probably wouldn't phrase your sentence so conversationally anyway; it would be more like
The more important question is whether a way out can be found.
When you do really need a colon, though, I'm not sure there's an official rule about it. The one I follow is to capitalize the next word only if it begins a complete sentence that can stand on its own.
We must ask ourselves this question: Can a way out be found?
We must consider two questions: whether a way out can be found, and what that way might be.
But that's just a rule of thumb, and I'm not sure myself if I always observe it. |
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