comma or semicolon in list: including: self-esteem; self-efficacy;.

deselzie

Senior Member
USA, English
I am not sure if I have correctly punctuated the following sentence. Do I use commas or semicolons in a series which follows a colon?

There are several affective factors that relate to learning and second language acquisition including: self-esteem; self-efficacy; willingness (to communicate); inhibition; risk taking; anxiety; empathy; and extroversion.

Thank you so much for your help :)
 
  • There is no rule about using semicolons in a list that follows a colon. For a sentence such as yours, you would use commas. You normally only use semicolons to separate items in a list if an item (or items) has commas of its own, so that it would be confusing trying to figure out which are items and what are clauses.
     
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