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punctuation - A trail of colons


I find I often, when writing, want to string colons together. Here is a recent example:



These two moments would be likely candidates for retelling: they both connect the people of San Andrés Tuxtla to great civilizations: the pre-Hispanic Olmec and the Spanish, when they were at the height of their power.



Now, fret ye not! I eventually replaced the first colon with a period. I find, however, that after using one colon I often want to use another.


Of course, this could just be my own little grammatical quirk. Maybe I find colons a little like Lay's and can't have just one.


I am curious, though, if there is any grammatical or linguistic explanation for this desire? Does a colon regularly induce a sentence or clause that also seeks a colon?




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