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I am having a bit of trouble understanding when to use a colon, or not.

I heard her whisper "I'm cold."

I heard her whisper: "I'm cold."

I think the first one is correct, but why?

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  • Possible dupe, but with no answers: ell.stackexchange.com/questions/130994/…
    – gotube ♦
    Commented Nov 1, 2023 at 6:23
  • A colon is often used to indicate that the statement following it completes, or flows from, the previous statement on a semantic level. A simple example is an enumeration: The neighborhood greengrocer sells a variety of melons: watermelon, canteloupe, muskmelon, honedew, casaba, and crenshaw.
    – TimR
    Commented Nov 1, 2023 at 17:13
  • A more complicated example. The 18th century was a time of economic injustice in England, as many property crimes became punishable by hanging. But the rate of execution by the third quarter of the century was far from uniform throughout the country: executions in London were more than fifty times higher than the average. You could put a full stop instead of the colon, but the colon indicates that the following sentence is directly connected, semantically, to the preceding one.
    – TimR
    Commented Nov 1, 2023 at 17:35

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Before a direct quote, we normally use a comma. It's also correct to use a colon, but it's not very common.

Direct quotes with no punctuation are incorrect.

Indirect quotes/reported speech, however, do not require punctuation:

She whispered that she was cold.

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Use a comma when the quote isn't part of the flow of the sentence, but is part of he sentence. The part before the quote isn't a complete sentence and it ends with the verb "said".

Joe said, "I want a dog."

Use nothing when the quote is part of the sentence

Joe said that there is "a big hairy dog" on the field.

The words, "big hairy dog" are the actual words that Joe used, but the rest of the words might not be. This is also the case in "scare" quotes.

That "dog" is was actually a bear!

Use a colon when the introduction to the quote is a full sentence. This is most common with block quotes. This sentence is complete, and it doesn't end with "said" or "wrote" etc.

Prof Joe considered the evolution of the dog:

Samples of ice showed no evidence of dog hairs prior to ...

In your example, you would use a comma:

I heard her whisper, "I'm cold."

These are stylistic recommendations, not grammar rule.

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