Of all the wild animals in their area, none was more useful to the Del

Here's the version created via the use of the correct answer, (A):

Of all the wild animals in their area, none was more useful to the Delaware tribes than the Virginia white tailed deer: it was a source of meat, and its hide was used for clothing, its antlers and bones for tools, and its sinews and gut for bindings and glue.

Following the colon are two ideas expressed by, "it was ..." and "it's hide was ...." While it may seem odd that two "and"s are used to break up what may appear to be a list of four like items, what's really going on is that the first "and" is used to separate different ideas, the first of the two ideas being the "it was a source of" idea and the second being the list of items and how they are used. So, it makes sense to include the first "and."

The first "and" is necessary also because of the ellipsis used in writing the last two items. "Was used" can be elided from the last two items without loss of clarity, because the last two items resemble structurally and logically the second item. Thus, the "was used" that appears in the second item, "its hide was used," can be understood to be expressed by the third and fourth items without its being written. However, this ellipsis would not work were there no "and" between the first and second items, because the first item is logically different from the last three, and because "was used" does not appear in the first item. So, the first "and" allows the ellipsis.

So, following the colon in this version are two parallel items connected by comma + "and," the second of which items is composed of a parallel list of three items in which "was used" is elided in the last two items, which are parallel to the first of the three, even without "was used," because the last two items are understood to express "was used" even though "was used" is not written.

Adding further to the complexity of the sentence is the fact that each of the last two items in the list of how things were used contains a list of two items. At the same time, these lists nested within the list items do not affect the parallelism of the list of how things were used.


A colon in a sentence is meant to separate from what precedes the colon from an item or list of items. Consider the following example:

Jack laid on the table all of his possessions: a set of clothes, a pair of shoes, and an ancient picture of his father.

In the above example, the colon is followed by a list of nouns.

It is also correct to use a clause after a colon, if the clause expresses an item related to what precedes the colon.

A modifier is not an item or a list of items. A modifier modifies something. So, a modifier should not be separated from the what precedes it in a sentence by a colon. A colon separates a modifier from what it modifies in an illogical way. So, (C), (D), and (E) are incorrect because, in all three, a modifier follows a colon.

I personally don't really understand using a colon in the way in which it is used in the correct answer to this question, because the sentence is not really set up in a way that indicates that an item or a list of items is coming. All the same, it is the case that, in the correct answer, a list of items follows the colon.