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When to capitalise after a colon

When you’ve got a simple list of items or dependent clauses, you usually don’t capitalise the first letter after the colon:

The recipe required four ingredients: butter, bread, eggs, and ham.

Also, if the quote that follows a colon is not a fully independent clause, we usually don’t capitalise it:

John said many things yesterday: ‘yikes’, ‘wow’, and ‘oohh’.

If you have an independent clause after a colon, capitalise the first letter. Do this whether it’s a quote or just a point like in this sentence:

I think I know why most people like Tyrannosaurus so much: It was one of the earliest discovered dinosaurs and was, until recently, the largest land carnivore that ever lived.