Colon-ized
I admit it, I'm a grammar nerd and a punctuation geek. This stuff matters to me. Not more than plot, or character, or dialogue, but it's up there. It's why I offer to do stuff like secretly proofread my Town Report so that later I, and those like me, won't have to grimace through 's-plurals and commas following some, but not all, introductory clauses.
So when I came across this sentence in The Graveyard Book, I was in heaven--look at this:
[Baby Bod has climbed out of his crib and landed on a pile of stuffed toys]: "He was surprised when he hit the floor, but he did not cry out: if you cried they came and put you back in your crib."
As soon as I read that sentence I said, out loud, "That is the most beautiful use of a colon I have ever seen." It's a good thing I was alone in the office. To find it in a novel for young readers is more than could possibly be hoped. That's a sentence for teachers to note and use when they explain how to use a colon. Talk about effective use of punctuation!
Of course, being me, I also wonder what happened to the rule about capitalizing the phrase that follows the colon, but I'm going to assume it was hit by the same revision that deleted the commas before "too," (see Kate Messner's entry about her copyedited manuscript and copyeditor-to-be daughter). Is there a style sheet I didn't pick up?
Neil Gaiman is a punctuation god! On top of being one of the finest storytellers currently putting a shine on our language. Hope that compliment doesn't go to his head. On top of the Newbery and the movie, maybe it's a bit much?