A few punctuation questions

[OGone]

Because I suck with punctuation.

Is there a difference between types of ellipses and dashes?

I see a lot of books using ". . ." and I'm using the, far less ugly imo, "...".
I'm wondering if there's an actual difference between the two or are they purely just two different ways of formatting?

Same question for em dashes (–) and en dashes (—)
I know the em dash is used to source quotes but are there any other differences when writing or are they interchangeable? Should I stick to one type? Is there a preference?

Also I keep seeing books using colons for lists but stating things like "the ingredients are as follows:".
That's incorrect right, you never reference the list before using the colon?

I've a final question: when is it okay to capitalize after a colon? Sometimes I see it, sometimes I don't.

I realize I could probably Google these answers but maybe others have similar questions and somebody might have something interesting to add.

Thx guys

 

[kayd_mon]

I remember in college, my professors would have us use the ellipsis with spaces.

I could be wrong, but the dashes are a matter of preference. As long as you differentiate between a hyphen and a dash, you're ok.

Colons are something I always made a habit of avoiding, given the fact that it's easy to use them incorrectly. But for your question, I think it's ok to use it like that. You can't say, "The ingredients are:" because you're not supposed to place a colon between a verb and its complements. If you put a phrase like "the following" before your list, it causes that word/phrase to be the object or complement of your verb, and therefore acceptable to place before a list. That's how I was taught.

 

[Butterfly]

Elipses... are used as a trailing off of thought or dialogue. Or to indicate a pause in thought, dialogue, narration. Never without a space, and always adjoined to the previous word.

m-dashes -- are used to indicate an interruption of thought or dialogue, usually by another character, or something that's has caught a character's attention.

n-dashes - (so called because it's a size of an n, and half the size of m) are used to hyphenate words, like n-dash.

At least that's how I use them.

I've never used a colon, at least in fiction, and rarely a semi-colon.

 

[wordwalker]

Especially, remember the difference between the m-dash's quick interruption and the elipse's trailing off or pause. Using the right one clarifies what kind of shift it is, and the wrong one muddles it.

 

[wordnerd]

I don't know if there's a hard and fast rule on capitaliztion with colons, but I only capitalize after a colon if it's a complete sentence. To use your example, "The ingredients are as follows:" I wouldn't capitalize the first ingredient in the list. However, if the sentence was something like, "Warning: These ingredients are combustible," then I'd caps the first word.