When to use capitals and semicolons in a colon introduced list?
Are these correct?
There are three reasons for this: 1) the ball is blue; 2) cube black: and 3) the sphere red.
There are three reasons for this: first, the ball is blue; second, cube black; and third, the sphere red.
There are three reasons for this: First, the ball is blue. Second, cube black. And third, the sphere red.
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4 Answers
The treatment of horizontal lists is a matter of style, not fixed rule, so there is variance. If I were editing these for a publisher, I would follow the publisher’s style. Taken in isolation, either the first or the second is acceptable handling of the list, but not the third. I would edit the third as follows because your structure requires complete sentences:
There are three reasons for this. First, the ball is blue. Second, the cube is black. And third, the sphere is red.
In all three examples, you ought to add “the” before “cube,” and I would call for a comma after the nouns to indicate omission, thus:
There are three reasons for this: 1) the ball is blue; 2) the cube, black: and 3) the sphere, red.
More often, I see horizontal lists handled with double parens, thus:
There are three reasons for this: (1) the ball is blue; (2) the cube, black: and (3) the sphere, red.
The third line is wrong. The first line is ok but clunky. The second line is best.
And yes you need the “the” before the “cube”.
The difference between the first and second examples is the use of cardinal versus ordinal numbers. The first just enumerates the reasons and tags each with a number; the second implies a ranking, such as of importance or chronology. The first is also more common in casual and technical prose and would not be out of place in educational materials. I would not normally expect to see it in formal writing.
None of the three is correct. In order to ellipsize the second and third verbs, you need hierarchical punctuation. Two examples follow.
(1) the ball is blue, (2) the cube black, (3) the sphere red.
(1) the ball is blue; (2) the cube, black; (3) the sphere, red.
but even those are not idiomatic. Best is not to ellipsize.
(1) the ball is blue, (2) the cube is black, (3) the sphere is red.
As regards capitalization: Because the colon introduces explanatory material, rather than setting a context, capitalization after the colon would be incorrect in your example.
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