Capitalization after use of colon?
This is a sentence from a current writing project detailing how people in jail feel about reading.
It provides an escape from the reality of what lies before them: time.
Should "time" be capitalized? I've seen published examples of both upper and lower case instances during a brief research of the issue.
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Lots of opinions here, but let's look to a higher authority. According to the Chicago Manual of Style, the word after a colon is lowercase, even if it starts a complete sentence, unless it's a proper noun.
The exception is when the colon introduces multiple sentences or when it introduces speech.
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Another thing to consider is the context. For instance, you might be "passing the time by hanging out" or you might be "subjected to the whims of Time". In the former example, time is an object. In the latter example, time is more like an entity... much like how people may refer to "Death", "Life", "Truth", etc. as opposed to "death", "life", "truth", etc.
From the description of your writing project, it doesn't seem like you'd refer to Time, though I'm sure you could if you crafted your writing project that way.
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I have seen capital letters after colons if what comes after the colon is a full sentence:
These rules have only one purpose: They are meant to humiliate.
If you remove the subject and verb, the word after the colon stays lowercase:
These rules have only one purpose: to humiliate.
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