A colon is a rhetorical figure consisting of a clause

Clause

In grammar, a clause is the smallest grammatical unit that can express a complete proposition. In some languages it may be a pair or group of words that consists of a subject and a predicate, although in other languages in certain clauses the subject may not appear explicitly as a noun phrase,...

 which is grammatically, but not logically, complete. In Latin, it is called a membrum or membrum orationis.

Sentences consisting of two cola are called dicola; those with three are tricola

Tricolon

In rhetoric, a bicolon, tricolon, or tetracolon is a sentence with two, three, or four clearly defined parts , usually independent clauses and of increasing power.-Tricolon:...

. The corresponding adjectives are dicolic and tricolic; colic is not used in this sense.

An isocolon

Isocolon

Isocolon is a figure of speech in which parallelism is reinforced by members that are of the same length. A well-known example of this is Julius Caesar's "Veni, vidi, vici" , which also illustrates that a common form of isocolon is tricolon, or the use of three parallel members.It is derived from...

 is a sentence composed of cola of equal syllabic length.

Septuagint used this system in the poetic books.
When Jerome

Jerome

Saint Jerome was a Roman Christian priest, confessor, theologian and historian, and who became a Doctor of the Church. He was the son of Eusebius, of the city of Stridon, which was on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia...

 translated the books of Prophets, he arranged the text colometrically.

The colometric system was used by bilingual codices of New Testament

New Testament

The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....

, f.e. Codex Bezae

Codex Bezae

The Codex Bezae Cantabrigensis, designated by siglum Dea or 05 , δ 5 , is a codex of the New Testament dating from the 5th century written in an uncial hand on vellum. It contains, in both Greek and Latin, most of the four Gospels and Acts, with a small fragment of the 3 John...

, Codex Claromontanus

Codex Claromontanus

Codex Claromontanus, symbolized by Dp or 06 , δ 1026 , is a Greek-Latin diglot uncial manuscript of the New Testament, written in an uncial hand on vellum. The Greek and Latin text on facing pages...

. Also some Greek and Latin manuscript used this system, including Codex Coislinianus

Codex Coislinianus

Codex Coislinianus designated by Hp or 015 , α 1022 , was named also as Codex Euthalianus. It is a Greek uncial manuscript of the Pauline epistles, dated palaeographically to the 6th century. The text is written stichometrically.It has marginalia...

 and Codex Amiatinus

Codex Amiatinus

The Codex Amiatinus, designated by siglum A, is the earliest surviving manuscript of the nearly complete Bible in the Latin Vulgate version, and is considered to be the most accurate copy of St. Jerome's text. It is missing the Book of Baruch. It was produced in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of...

.

External references

• Colon: Part of a glossary of classical rhetorical terms.
• 'The Colon as Linguistic Sentence', section of a dissertation on rhetoric discussing the nature of the colon.