Thanks to the Grammar Diva Arlene Miller's wonderful blog, this blog post talks about using colons, and how to write different types of lists correctly.
Source: Colon Alert: Something's Coming...
co·lon1
ˈkōlən/
noun
noun: colon; plural noun: colons
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a punctuation mark (:) indicating.
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that a writer is introducing a quotation or a list of items.
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that a writer is separating two clauses of which the second expands or illustrates the first.
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a statement of proportion between two numbers.
"a ratio of 10:1"
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the separation of hours from minutes (and minutes from seconds) in a statement of time given in numbers.
"4:30 p.m."
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the number of the chapter and verse respectively in biblical references.
"Exodus 3:2"
mid 16th century (as a term in rhetoric denoting a section of a complex sentence, or a pause before it): via Latin from Greek kōlon ‘limb, clause.’
